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IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 



BOOKS BY 
PROF. WILLIAM ADAMS BROWN 

Published by Charles Scbibneb's Sons 



Is Christianity Practicable? 12mo 

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IS CHRISTIANITY 
PRACTICABLE ? 



LECTUEES DELIVERED IN JAPAN 
BY 

WILLIAM ADAMS BROWN, Ph.D., D.D. 

UNION SEMINARY LECTURER ON CHRISTIANITY 
IN THE FAR EAST 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1916 



Tffm 



COPTKIGHT, 1916, BT 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published November, 1916 




©O.A446687 



TO THE MEMORY 

OP 

GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX 

MY COLLEAGUE FOR MANY YEARS 

MY PREDECESSOR IN THIS LECTURESHIP 

MY TRUSTED AND DEAR FRIEND 



PREFACE 

On the 25th of April, 1912, there died 
in the Severance Hospital at Seoul a 
man who was bound to Japan by many 
ties. For fourteen years a missionary in 
Tokyo, George William Knox continued 
after his return to the United States to 
take a lively interest in things Japanese. 
Through his books and articles he inter- 
preted the spirit of the Japanese people 
to his fellow countrymen in America, and 
during the Russo-Japanese War he was 
one of the most effective advocates of 
the Japanese cause. It was always his 
hope to revisit the country where his 
young manhood had been spent, and to 
share with his friends there, young and 
old, the insights of his maturer years. 
This opportunity came to him in 1910, 
through his appointment as Union Semi- 

[vii] 



PREFACE 

nary lecturer on Christianity in the Far 
East, but his hope was not destined to 
be realized. An attack of pneumonia, 
contracted while he was in China, pros- 
trated him just as he was on the point 
of leaving Korea for Japan. From this 
illness he never recovered, and the lec- 
tures which all who knew his fitness to 
deal with questions of comparative reli- 
gion had so eagerly anticipated were 
never delivered. 

Twice before in the person of its be- 
loved president, Dr. Charles Cuthbert 
Hall, Union Seminary had sent one of 
its faculty to the Far East to witness to 
its faith in the supreme importance of 
the cause of Christian missions. Dr. 
Knox hoped that the custom might be- 
come an established one. He repeatedly 
expressed the wish that others of his 
colleagues might follow the precedent 
set by Dr. Hall and himself. My own 
appointment as lecturer on Christianity 

[viii] 



PREFACE 

was the result of this suggestion. It 
seems appropriate, therefore, that this 
little book, which owes its inspiration 
to Dr. Knox's example, should be in- 
scribed to his memory. 

The substance of the chapters that 
follow was delivered in the form of lec- 
tures in Kyoto, Kobe, Osaka, and Tokyo, 
in response to an invitation from the 
Federation of the Japanese Churches, 
and from the Continuation Committee 
of Japan, a rbody representing all the 
organized Christian agencies in that coun- 
try. At Kyoto the lectures were given 
under the auspices of the Doshisha; at 
Kobe, of the Kwansei Gakuin; at Tokyo, 
in the Ginza Church, under the auspices 
of a committee representing the different 
theological schools of that city. Two 
of the lectures were repeated at Osaka 
before an audience which included rep- 
resentatives both of the missionary body 
and of the native church. 

[ix] 



PREFACE 

The subject chosen needs no justifica- 
tion. In this time of world crisis when 
existing customs are everywhere being 
challenged, and the very existence of 
civilized society seems threatened by the 
world war, it is essential that we who are 
Christians should raise anew the ques- 
tion as to the nature and grounds of 
our faith, and should ask ourselves 
whether the enterprise in which we are 
engaged is a practicable one, worthy of 
the allegiance of sensible men. Espe- 
cially is this inquiry appropriate in such 
a country as Japan, where Christianity is 
a missionary religion, facing older faiths 
which also claim universality. Here the 
grounds on which Christians base their 
belief in the validity of their own re- 
ligion have peculiar interest, not only to 
the Christian, but to the non-Christian. 
In considering these grounds, therefore, 
in the wider connection in which the 
war has placed them, we are making a 
[x] 



PREFACE 

direct contribution to the cause of mis- 
sionary apologetic. 

But in truth the issue here raised 
transcends all local or national limita- 
tions. The question whether Christi- 
anity is a practicable religion is not 
simply a missionary question; it is a 
human question. Indeed we may say 
without exaggeration that it is the human 
question, the question upon our answer 
to which our hope for the future of man- 
kind depends. Is force to be the ulti- 
mate word in human affairs, or is there 
something higher and more compelling — 
the love which bears and believes all 
things and which, if our Christian faith 
be justified, shall never fail? If these 
pages can do anything to strengthen this 
faith where it has been weakened, or re- 
vive it where it has died, they will have 
justified their purpose. 

A part of the matter incorporated in 
the present volume has already appeared 

[xi] 



PREFACE 

in print. Since the war broke out I 
have had opportunity repeatedly to dis- 
cuss the moral issues which it has raised 
in lectures, addresses, and articles. So 
far as this material was available for my 
present purpose I have not hesitated to 
make use of it. A part of the first chap- 
ter appeared in the Hibbert Journal for 
January, 1916, under the title, "Is Chris- 
tianity Practicable?" The substance of 
the second was delivered as the Drew 
Lecture at Hackney College, in London, 
in October, 1914. 1 A part of the third 
appeared in Present Day Papers. 2 A few 
paragraphs have also been used from a 
sermon on "The Allies of Faith," 3 and 
an address on "Worldwide Peace." 4 I 

1 Published in the Christian World Pulpit for October 
28, 1914, and the Methodist Quarterly for January, 
1915. 

2 "Christianity on Trial," September, 1915; also 
published as a tract by the Church Peace Union. 

3 Oxford, 1914. 

4 " Worldwide Peace; What It Is, Why We W T ant It, 
and What We Can Do to Bring It About," published 
in the Christian Work, April, 17, 24, 1915. 

[xii] 



PREFACE 

wish here to express my indebtedness to 
the journals in which these extracts first 
appeared for permission to reprint them 
here. 

It remains to acknowledge my indebt- 
edness to the friends who have helped 
me in the preparation of these lectures. 
First of all to the Board of Directors of 
the Union Theological Seminary, to whose 
action I owe my appointment as Union 
Seminary lecturer; secondly, to the 
Federation of Churches and the Con- 
tinuation Committee, whose invitation 
encouraged me to accept the appoint- 
ment, and especially to President Ibuka, 
of Tokyo, and Dr. Dearing of Yoko- 
hama, who arranged my programme in 
Japan, and the latter of whom read the 
lectures in manuscript; most of all to 
the many friends in Japan, both among 
the missionaries and the native Chris- 
tians, whose sympathetic interest in the 
lectures during their delivery, and whose 

[xiii] 



PREFACE 

request for their preservation in more 
permanent form have encouraged me to 
give them to the public. To Professor 
Kashiwai, my interpreter in Tokyo, and 
a former student in the Union Theologi- 
cal Seminary, I owe a special debt of 
gratitude for his accurate and pains- 
taking translation of the lectures into 
Japanese; and to Dr. Wainwright of the 
Christian Literature Society, which has 
undertaken the publication of the lec- 
tures in Japan, my thanks are due for 
seeing the manuscript through the press. 



[xiv] 



CONTENTS 



I. The World Crisis as Challenge and 

as Opportunity 1 

The Challenge of the War to Christian Faith 
— The Issue Defined. Is Christianity So- 
cially Practicable ? — Attempts to Evade the 
Issue — The Principles by Which It Is to 
Be Met. 

II. The Christian Interpretation of His- 
tory 48 

The World Crisis in the Light of the Christian 
Philosophy of History — History as God's 
Training-School of Character — History as 
God's Education for Brotherhood — History 
as the Meeting-Place of God and Man. 

EI. The Christian Programme for Human- 
ity 97 

The Christian Ideal for Society — The Alterna- 
tives to Christianity — The Practicability of 
the Christian Programme — The Resources 
Available for the Christian Cause. 

IV. The Duty for To-Morrow .... 141 

Where to Begin — The Christian's Duty to His 
Neighborhood — The Christian's Duty to 
His Country — The Christian's Attitude 
Toward War. 

[svj 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

V. What the Church Can Do .... 191 

The Opportunity of the Church — The Witness 
of the Church to Human Brotherhood — 
Missions as an Invitation to Spiritual Ad- 
venture — The Living God as the Guarantee 
of Final Success. 

Index 239 



txvi] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 



CHAPTER I 

THE WORLD CRISIS AS CHALLENGE 
AND AS OPPORTUNITY 

Two friends were recently conversing 
about the war. "I do not see how I 
can go on living," said one. "It seems 
as if I had lost God out of my world." 
"Strange," answered the other, "it 
seems to me as if I had just found Him." 
The conversation is typical. Amid 
all the questions which the war has 
brought to the surface — questions eco- 
nomic, political, racial — the moral ques- 
tion has claimed the centre of attention. 
Appalling as has been the loss of human 
lives, colossal as has been the destruc- 
tion of capital, men have been conscious 
of a danger even greater for the life of 
[l] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

the spirit. What will the war mean for 
the higher life of man? Are we on the 
eve of a permanent relapse into bar- 
barism, or are we witnessing the birth 
throes of a new and higher social order? 
To every thoughtful man this ques- 
tion is of interest, but to the Christian 
it comes home with peculiar closeness. 
For Christianity in all its forms believes 
in a moral government of God in which 
all nations and races are included, and 
judges all experience, social and indi- 
vidual alike, in its bearing upon this 
supreme issue. It is not strange then 
that in every country of Christendom, 
those which are at war and those which 
are participants only by their sympathy, 
men are asking themselves what bearing 
the events we are witnessing will have 
upon the religion to which they own 
allegiance. How far has the Christian 
claim been confirmed, how far disproved, 
by the war? Of the two judgments 
[2] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

quoted at the beginning of this chapter, 
tested by the Christian standard, which 
has most evidence on its side ? 

In the pages that follow I propose to 
raise, and so far as I can, to answer this 
question. I wish to ask what lessons 
we may learn from the present crisis as 
to the nature and validity of Christian 
faith, and what contribution Christians 
can make to the tasks of spiritual re- 
construction which must be undertaken 
after the war is over? 

One of the most striking features of 
the last two years has been their revela- 
tion of the failure of the churches to ex- 
ercise any controlling influence upon the 
national policy of the so-called Christian 
nations. In an age when unity was the 
dominant note of Christian preaching; 
when the barriers that divided the de- 
nominations, in sympathy if not in ac- 
tion, were everywhere being overpassed; 
when the Christian consciousness of 
[3] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

world responsibility and world oppor- 
tunity had voiced itself in such gather- 
ings as the Edinburgh Conference, and 
such calls as that of the Conference on 
Faith and Order; when in every coun- 
try of Christendom the older individu- 
alistic conception of Christianity was 
giving place to one more conscious of 
its social responsibility, and more sen- 
sitive to the appeals of universal need, 
we might have expected that when the 
issue of war or peace had to be faced, 
the Christian conscience would have 
been alert enough, and the protests of 
the churches sufficiently powerful and 
effective to have called a halt in time. 
Whatever may have been true of other 
ages and of men of other faiths, in this 
age at least, and among nations calling 
themselves Christian, war on such a 
scale should have been impossible. 

But as a matter of fact this expectation 
has been disappointed. Not only were 
[4] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

the churches powerless to prevent the 
war, but they made no serious attempt 
to do so. And now that the war has 
come, and the nations on either side are 
committed to the contest, the Chris- 
tians within each are found heart and 
soul in support of their respective govern- 
ments, not only in the physical struggle 
in which they are engaged, but what is 
more significant, in their interpretation 
of the moral issues at stake. With all 
recognition of the unselfishness of pur- 
pose that has animated Christians as 
individuals, it must yet be confessed 
that with reference to international re- 
lations the Christian sentiment of the 
world has failed to make itself felt 
in this supreme crisis in any unified 
and effective way. Individual Christians 
have said and done many noble and un- 
selfish things. The church as a whole 
has shown no consciousness of indepen- 
dent responsibility. It has committed 
15] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

itself to no definite constructive pro- 
gramme. 

In this, to be sure, Christians do not 
stand alone. What is true of the church 
is true of every one of the idealistic 
agencies in whose activity we were wont 
to take pride. When put to the su- 
preme test, science and art, literature 
and law have proved as impotent as re- 
ligion. The Palace of The Hague is de- 
serted. Where two years ago we found 
business men investing their capital with 
equal impartiality in Russia and Austria, 
Germany and England, to-day we see 
the nations organizing their economic 
resources on lines determined by the 
present conflict, and what is more men- 
acing, promising themselves the perpetu- 
ation of this divisive policy after the 
war is over. Socialism, the one political 
creed already definitely committed to an 
international programme, has seen its 
organization disrupted by the strain of 
[6] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

opposing patriotisms, and its members, 
with a heavy heart, abandoning their 
dream of the world war against capital- 
istic oppression for the more pressing, if 
repugnant, task of killing their brother 
Socialists who, like themselves but in 
opposing ranks, have obeyed their coun- 
try's summons to arm in her defense. 
Even science, the most objective and un- 
impassioned of all human interests, has 
caught the prevailing contagion, and, 
abandoning all pretense of impartiality, 
committed itself in the persons of its 
most distinguished representatives to a 
propaganda of partisanship. 

What we seem to see therefore is the 
bankruptcy of internationalism in all its 
forms. But of all these failures, signal 
and discouraging as they are, none is 
more surprising, and none more dis- 
heartening, than that of the Christian 
church. For no other organization rep- 
resents in a more unqualified way the 

[7] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

higher interests of mankind, and none is 
more definitely committed to the ideal of 
brotherhood, of which war is the ex- 
plicit denial. It becomes incumbent, 
therefore, upon us who call ourselves 
Christians, to inquire into the reason 
for this failure; to discover whether it 
is irremediable, and if not to learn what 
we can do to make its recurrence in the 
future impossible. 

The question thus raised is not an 
academic one. It is not one which has 
to do simply with our private satisfac- 
tion and reassurance in faith, important 
as these may be. It is forced upon us 
by the social situation. For we are not 
simply thinkers, but actors. When peace 
comes, whether it be sooner or later, and 
the work of reconstruction has to be 
faced, we shall have to do our part in 
determining the policies to be adopted, 
and the methods to be followed in realiz- 
ing them. And what we do will be de- 

[8] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

termined by what we believe. Shall we 
yield to the prevailing scepticism, and 
abandon our hope of the realization of the 
Christian ideal of brotherhood on earth? 
Shall we seek compensation for Chris- 
tianity's failure here in the millenarian's 
dream of a triumph of righteousness in 
some other world than ours, or in the 
mystic peace which follows the abandon- 
ment of all earthly ideals for the higher 
bliss of communion with the ineffable 
God? Or, is the fault not in our ideal, 
but in ourselves, a fault which may be 
remedied if we do our part, and which 
in fact it is our most pressing duty, as 
it is our supreme privilege, to remedy? 

It is difficult to exaggerate the im- 
portance of this question. When the 
initial shock of the war was over and 
men awoke from the numbness of their 
first surprise to face the problem of ad- 
justment to the new and strange world 
in which they found themselves, the 
[9] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

first effect was a certain exhilaration of 
spirit. The very magnitude of the crisis 
had in it something inspiring, almost en- 
nobling. Small concerns were forgotten, 
petty interests no longer attracted. Men 
were solemnized, uplifted, carried out of 
themselves by the enthusiasm of a great 
loyalty. Religious men especially were 
quick to respond to the ideal elements in 
the situation. In their country's appeal 
to sacrifice and devotion Christians found 
a natural outlet for the instinct of con- 
secration which had been bred in them 
by their religion. They did not doubt 
that in serving the nation's cause they 
were at the same time promoting God's 
kingdom on the earth. 

But as time went on this early enthu- 
siasm gave place to a different mood. 
As the magnitude of the struggle has 
become more apparent, and its cost not 
only in human life but in faith and 
hope and love, it has become less easy 
[io] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

to maintain the optimism which char- 
acterized the early days of the war. 
Face to face with the grim reality of 
modern warfare, with its ruthless bru- 
tality and shameless cynicism, the ideals 
of peace which we associate with Chris- 
tianity seem unreal and remote. What 
had at first been regarded as unthinka- 
ble has come to be taken as a matter of 
course; and even those Christians who 
still cherish the ideal of world brother- 
hood and peace despair of finding any 
sphere in which it can be made prac- 
tically operative for generations to come. 
Such a situation is full of danger, for a 
faith which cannot find appropriate ex- 
pression in action is held by a precarious 
tenure. From every point of view, there- 
fore, the inquiry which is here proposed 
becomes of commanding importance. 

What then is the issue which the war 
has raised for Christian faith? It is in 
[HI 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

briefest statement whether Christianity is 
a practicable religion for society as well 
as for the individuals who compose it? 

There are two different angles from 
which the question as to the practica- 
bility of the Christian religion may be 
approached. It may be approached from 
the point of view of the individual, or it 
may be approached from the point of 
view of man's social relations. We may 
ask how far Christianity is a practicable 
religion for the individual man and 
woman; whether it offers a reasonable 
creed, a satisfying object of worship, a 
worthy ideal of conduct, and motives 
adequate to insure its realization; or 
we may ask whether Christianity is so- 
cially practicable, a religion which in 
such a world as this, with its complex 
relationships, economic, social, and po- 
litical, we may reasonably expect to 
become the accepted standard for the 
common faith and life of man. 

[12] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

It makes a great difference in which 
of these two senses we understand our 
question. From the point of view of the 
individual, few would be found to deny 
the practicability of Christianity, for the 
evidence to the contrary is accessible 
on every hand. There are men and 
women all the world over who believe 
in the Christian God, accept the Chris- 
tian standard, and realize that standard 
in their own personal conduct to a re- 
markable degree. They are unselfish, 
trustful, brotherly, forgiving, hopeful, 
pure. They face calamity with courage, 
sin with repentance, opportunity with 
consecration, and persecution with self- 
control. They may be mistaken in their 
belief, and their hope may be destined 
to disappointment, but no one can deny 
that, so far as their personal experience 
is concerned, Christianity has proved and 
is still proving itself not only a practica- 
ble, but a satisfying and ennobling religion. 

[13] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

For men of this type the war has in- 
troduced no essentially new element into 
their religious experience. It has im- 
mensely deepened and intensified it. It 
has provided a new challenge for faith, a 
new opportunity for service, but it has 
not made it appreciably harder to be- 
lieve in God. Indeed, for many it has 
become far easier, for the very shattering 
of earthly ideals and the new revelation 
of the transitoriness of material posses- 
sions has served to set in clearer per- 
spective the unseen reality, and removed, 
as it were, a veil which seemed to hang 
between them and God. For many it 
has meant a readjustment of standards 
and a reinforcement of the tendency 
present in every religion which, like 
Christianity, makes much of personality, 
to postpone the consummation from this 
life to another. Where so many of the 
young and the strong have been cut off 
in the flower of their youth, it cannot but 

[14] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

be that thought should turn to the life 
after death for the solution of the prob- 
lems that baffle us here. But this, too, 
is not a new faith, only the re-emphasis 
in a new setting of what has been pres- 
ent in Christianity from the first. 

But with the other phase of the ques- 
tion it is different. When we ask whether 
Christianity is socially practicable, we 
ask whether the standards which have 
been accepted and in a measure realized 
by selected individuals here and there, 
are valid for the race as a whole; 
whether nations and the rival classes 
within each nation, whose dealings one 
with another are now conducted on purely 
selfish principles, may be expected to 
abandon their present rivalry in favor of 
the more generous and inclusive meth- 
ods advocated by Christ. 

For such a question the war is of mo- 
mentous significance. For war in the 
boldness of its affirmation of the su- 

[15] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

premacy of self-interest as between so- 
cial groups is, in its essence, the denial 
of Christianity. If war, and what war 
means, is a permanent social necessity, 
then Christianity in the sense in which 
we are interested in it here is socially 
impracticable, and our question must be 
answered in the negative. 

There are many thoughtful people who 
believe that this is the case. Regretfully 
but none the less explicitly, and with full 
consciousness of the significance of their 
action, they have abandoned any hope 
that the principles and ideals which in- 
spire the life of the best Christians can 
ever be made dominant in the life of 
society as a whole. They look upon the 
interpretation of Christianity which has 
been so much in evidence in the last gen- 
eration as a spirit of brotherhood and 
tolerance which was gradually to leaven 
society as a whole — which, indeed, was 
actually leavening it so rapidly and so 

[16] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

successfully as to make war in any such 
sense, and on any such scale as it had 
been known in the past, morally impos- 
sible — they look, I repeat, upon such a 
conception as this, a conception made 
familiar to us by the theology of the 
last thirty years, as a delusion, beau- 
tiful, if you will, as any dream of an 
ideal social state is beautiful, but wholly 
unrelated to the matter-of-fact world in 
which we live, and full of danger, as all 
unreality is dangerous which blinds men's 
eyes to the perils of the existing situation, 
and leaves them unprepared to meet it. 
And it cannot be denied that there is 
much to be said in support of this view. 
Tested by each one of its cardinal prin- 
ciples, Christianity seems hopelessly to 
have broken down. Whatever else one 
may or may not include in Christianity, 
this at least it has meant to those who 
have accepted it in the past; the father- 
hood of God, the brotherhood of man, 
[H] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

redemption through Christ, the leader- 
ship of the church. And yet how un- 
real and far away seems each of these 
when measured by the grim realities of 
the present ! How can one speak of the 
fatherhood of God in any universal and 
all-embracing sense in the light of the 
terrible calamities which have fallen upon 
so many innocent sufferers all over the 
round world! How can one believe in 
the goodness of God when one contem- 
plates this unexampled harvest of agony, 
of bitterness, and of death? How the 
whole dilemma that in every age has 
haunted the imagination of man, the di- 
lemma: either God would not, and then 
He is not good, or He could not, and 
then He is not in control — how this 
dilemma has been intensified until it 
seems as if it could not be evaded. For 
the individual here and there, the man 
of strong faith and heroic courage, it 
may be possible now as in the past to 

[18] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

fight one's way through the storms of 
doubt up into the clear skies of faith, 
but for the world at large, surely if what 
we see is to be the measure of the future, 
it is vain to talk of the fatherhood of 
God with any expectation of being be- 
lieved. 

The case is still more disheartening 
when we pass to the second great article 
of the Christian faith, the brotherhood 
of man. For what we seem to see to-day 
is a colossal denial on the part of that 
portion of the human race which has been 
longest under the influence of Christ, 
and which alone definitely calls itself 
Christian, of this central and cardinal 
conviction. Whatever else Christianity 
may or may not be, it is an international 
religion. It began as a protest against 
the doctrine which identified the King- 
dom of God with any single nation. It 
broke the barrier between Greek and 
Jew, and proclaimed the coming of a 
[ 19 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

new social order which should include 
both. But now we see the revival in 
the most brutal form of the very barriers 
which it was the mission of Christ to 
break down. The outstanding factor in 
the situation is the factor of race; the 
final unit, it is declared over and over 
again, must be the nation. The Chris- 
tian claim to reach beyond the individual 
life and prescribe laws for the state is 
explicitly repudiated, not simply by poli- 
ticians and by statesmen, but by Chris- 
tian theologians who tell us that Chris- 
tianity has to do purely with the life of 
the individual, that the unselfishness 
which it prescribes and the sacrifices 
which it inculcates are valid only for 
private persons within the limits of the 
present life. As for the state itself, that, 
we are told, is the ultimate unit, know- 
ing no law but that of its own existence, 
and recognizing no authority, human or 
divine, which has the right to ask of it 

[20] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

the self-abnegation which is the supreme 
law of the individual Christian. 

Nor is it otherwise with the third 
great Christian tenet, that of redemp- 
tion through Christ. Characteristic of 
Christianity as an individual experience 
is the consciousness of the forgiveness 
of sins, humility in the presence of the 
holy God, penitence because of the mem- 
ory of past wrong-doing, sympathy with 
others who are involved in the same 
legacy of sin and are heirs to the same 
blessing of redemption. The willingness 
to forgive as one has been forgiven, to 
bear and to forbear, to think no evil, 
to trust where one cannot see — all these 
qualities so characteristic of the finest 
Christian experience — where shall we look 
for them to-day in this world of sus- 
picion, enmity, and hate? How can we 
believe in the social practicability of 
the Christian religion when we find each 
of the warring nations repudiating all 

[21] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

blame from itself and attributing all re- 
sponsibility for this world tragedy to its 
opponents? What concord is there be- 
tween the spirit of Christ and the pride 
and self-satisfaction that are the domi- 
nant notes of the age in which we live ? 

And if it be said that these are but 
local and transitory symptoms, the evi- 
dence of a world-spirit which for the 
moment has slipped its leash and run 
wild without control; that within or- 
ganized Christianity at least we may 
count on a protest against these unchris- 
tian tendencies and the reaffirmation in 
the face of a challenging world of the 
great ideals and principles of which we 
have been speaking — we face this further 
and most discouraging fact of the all 
but complete abnegation of leadership 
on the part of the Christian church. In 
every country that is now at war we find 
the forces of organized religion mobil- 
ized with army and navy in defense of 

[ 22 ] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

the particular contention of the state 
in question. The consciousness of world 
citizenship so characteristic of the 
church of Christ in its great days is for 
the moment eclipsed, and one wonders 
whether it will ever be possible to revive 
it. 

It may be said — it will no doubt be 
said — that in principle there is nothing 
new in what we see. In one form or 
another the problem of evil has always 
been with us. But there is something in 
the size of the present crisis that stag- 
gers the imagination, something which 
forces home the issue even upon those 
comfortable and sheltered lives which 
have hitherto managed to elude it; while 
for those who are already hostile to Chris- 
tianity it seems as if here at last a weapon 
had been thrust into their hands to drive 
home their case with a logic which could 
not be resisted. 

[ 23 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

There are some Christians indeed who 
try to evade the difficulty by denying 
the relevancy of Christianity to the pres- 
ent life, or at least to those phases of 
human life which concern the relations 
of men in society. According to their 
view Christianity is purely a religion of 
individual salvation. It is concerned 
with the soul of man, not with his body, 
and with this life simply as a preparation 
for that which is to come. To those 
who hold such a view there is nothing 
surprising in the present situation. It 
involves no failure of Christianity, for 
the simple reason that Christianity has 
never proposed to be a religion for this 
world. Not transformation, they insist, 
but escape, is the Christian message; 
not leadership but protest the true func- 
tion of the church. 

There are two forms which this other- 
worldly Christianity may take. One is 
premillenarianism. This abandons the 

[ 24 ] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

present world to the power of evil. It 
expects no improvement in society until 
the great cataclysm at the end of the 
age when Christ is to return in person 
to establish his kingdom. In the mean- 
time it confines the duty of the church 
to preaching repentance to individuals, 
and warning them to be ready to wel- 
come their Lord when he comes. 

It is easy to understand how this 
view arose. During the first decades 
of Christianity no one anticipated the 
long duration of human history. The 
disciples believed that Christ would come 
again within the lifetime of men then 
living in order to establish his kingdom 
upon earth and to realize the social 
ideals of justice, brotherhood, and love. 
And when this expectation was disap- 
pointed and men faced the prospect of 
a period of waiting indefinitely long, 
the old habits of thought still persisted 
and the social consummation unattain- 

[25] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

able, or at least unrealized here, was 
awaited in the undiscovered country 
that lay beyond death. In the mean- 
time the energies of Christians found 
sufficient outlet in the preparation of the 
individual for the life after death, and 
the winning of new candidates for the 
citizenship of the future kingdom. 

So there grew up a conception of Chris- 
tianity which, while it still cherished the 
social ideal, and phrased its faith in 
terms of social fellowship, was yet in 
principle largely self-centred and indi- 
vidualistic. 

I would speak with the greatest re- 
spect of those who hold the premillena- 
rian view. In an age which is tempted to 
compromise for the sake of immediate 
success they have held aloft the ideal of 
personal purity and of unswerving loyalty. 
To the sorrowful spirit they have offered 
comfort; to the sinful, hope, and to 
those who despair of any outcome of 

[26] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

life here adequate to the demand of the 
Christian ideal, they promise in another 
world a new sphere of activity, and a 
better guarantee of success. 

But for many Christians, and these 
not the least sincere, such a restriction 
of the sphere of Christianity presents 
difficulties. They believe with all their 
might in the gospel of individual salva- 
tion, but they believe, too, that Christ 
has a message for society as well which 
cannot be neglected with impunity. 
They remember how much of the Bible 
is concerned with questions of social 
righteousness, and feel that such a situa- 
tion as faces us in Europe to-day would, 
if accepted as permanent and normal, 
be in effect a denial of the gospel. To 
hold fast the Christian ideal for society, 
while at the same time denying that it 
is capable of realization in the present 
world seems to involve one in a funda- 
mental contradiction which, if clearly 
[27] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

perceived, must paralyze the will. It 
gives us an ideal which we can do noth- 
ing to realize, and in the midst of events 
which are shaking the world to its foun- 
dations, assigns us the position of irre- 
sponsible spectators. 

The other form of other-worldly Chris- 
tianity is mysticism. This is even more 
radically antisocial. 1 It regards our re- 
lation to our fellow men in any possible 
world as of only temporary and transi- 
tory significance. To the mystic God is 
the only true reality, and God can brook 
no rival in the allegiance of the soul. 
From the vain quest of social betterment 
with its divided allegiance, from the false 

1 It is hardly necessary to say that I use mysticism 
in this connection in a technical sense to denote a 
type of religion which concentrates attention upon the 
relation between the individual soul and God, and re- 
gards all other factors as irrelevant if not positively 
disturbing. The term is often used in a wider sense, 
as a synonym of vital as distinct from traditional re- 
ligion, and those are called mystics who unite with 
ethical devotion to their fellow men a vivid sense of the 
presence and fellowship of God. It is with mysticism 
in the former sense only that we are concerned here. 

[28] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

hope of human progress with its inevita- 
ble disappointment, he would recall us 
to the inner world where alone God is 
to be found. 

When I was in England during the 
early months of the war I remember 
hearing a distinguished writer, herself a 
mystic, give a lecture on mysticism and 
the war. She denied that there was any- 
thing in the present situation which 
could disturb the calm of the mystic's 
life with God, for the simple reason that 
this life was lived on a level where all 
such questions as were involved in the 
present struggle in Europe were irrel- 
evant. All the passion and agony, the 
struggle and rivalry which fill the days 
and nights of the contestants at the 
front belong to the region of mundane 
interest, from which it is the function 
of religion to free the soul. In the un- 
troubled peace which God gives to his 
saints they have no place. 

[29] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

It is not my purpose here to consider 
the relation of mysticism to Christianity 
or to debate the question how far the 
Christian religion may rightly be called 
mystical. It will be sufficient to say 
that, to the extent to which the mystic's 
definition of Christianity is accepted as 
correct, it loses the marks which dis- 
tinguish it from the contemplative re- 
ligions of the East, and the teaching 
of Jesus is emptied of its natural and 
hitherto all but universally accepted 
meaning. When Jesus spoke of God as 
a Father, he used words borrowed from 
the most familiar of social relationships, 
and committed his disciples to an ideal 
incapable of description in terms of 
purely individualistic and self-centred 
religion. 

There are two reasons why it is difficult 
to be satisfied either with the premille- 
narian or the mystic creed. The first is 
psychological, growing out of the per- 

[30] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

sonal religious experience; the second, 
historical, based upon observation of the 
experience of others. 

The first reason why we find it hard 
to be satisfied with a purely individual- 
istic religion is that we know that we 
ourselves are more than individuals. The 
more we try to be our own best selves, 
the more earnest we make with the Chris- 
tian ideal of personal consecration and 
self-sacrifice, the more, in short, we try 
to do the things that individualistic 
Christianity requires of us, the more in- 
evitably we find ourselves led beyond 
the sphere of individual interest to the 
common aspirations, ideals, and endeav- 
ors which make up the life of men in 
society. 

The second reason is historical. As 
we retrace the story of mankind in the 
past and ask ourselves who are the 
heroes whom we most admire, and the 
benefactors in whose achievements we 

[31] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

take the most pride, we find they are 
those who have given themselves with 
the most complete devotion to the ser- 
vice of their fellows, and to whose sacri- 
fices, however fruitless at the time they 
may have seemed, we can trace some for- 
ward step in the upward march of hu- 
manity. Unless we are to renounce all 
hope of human progress and, like the 
Eastern sage of whom Kipling writes in 
"Kim," reduce history to a series of 
cycles in which generation after genera- 
tion retraces with unseeing eye the path- 
way already traversed by its predeces- 
sors, we must believe that God has some 
purpose in the movements of nations as 
well as of individuals, some satisfying 
goal to which, by however arduous and 
painful a path, he is leading the peoples. 
Such, at least, is the conviction which 
has inspired the present inquiry. I am 
writing for those who, with me, believe 
that Christianity has a social message, 

f 32 1 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

and that Christians have a responsibility 
to their neighborhood, and to the state, 
as well as to their own souls before God. 
To all who hold this faith the war is at 
once a challenge and an opportunity: 
a challenge to justify their faith against 
attack, an opportunity to learn lessons 
which may prevent similar failures in the 
future. 

It is so in every great crisis. It is at 
once test and teacher. We learn by 
what we experience, and no contact 
with opposing forces, whether in the 
world of thought or of action, leaves us 
just where we were before. The his- 
tory of the Christian religion is not sim- 
ply the story of the reaffirmation from 
age to age of a changeless deposit of 
faith; it is the record of a growing in- 
sight into the significance of principles 
whose full meaning can be only gradu- 
ally apprehended in the light of advanc- 
ing experience. 

[33] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

So it must be in the present crisis. It 
will not be enough for us to maintain our 
faith undaunted. We must grasp it more 
firmly and understand its consequences 
more completely than we did before. 

In the chapters that follow I propose 
to take up both aspects of this inquiry. 
We shall consider, in the first place, how 
we are to meet the challenge of the war, 
and what answer our faith can give to 
the reasons which are urged against it. 
In the second place, we shall ask our- 
selves what we can learn from the ex- 
perience through which we are passing, 
as to our duty for the future. 

But before we take up this more de- 
tailed study there are certain prelim- 
inary questions which must detain us 
for a moment. These have to do with 
the principles by which the practica- 
bility of any ideal must be judged. 

What then are the principles by which 

[34] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

we must test the claim of any social 
philosophy to offer us a practicable mode 
of life? I will mention four: (1) In 
estimating its success or failure it must 
be judged by its own claim, and not by 
some standard imported from without. 

(2) Where it is a question of a process 
we must take account of the entire 
period of the development and not merely 
of a cross-section artificially selected. 

(3) In the case of a far-reaching social 
phenomenon like Christianity, which 
touches life on all sides and is in process 
of constant reaction with its environ- 
ment, we must not identify the religion 
whose practicability is in question with 
the ecclesiastical organization which at 
best imperfectly expresses it. (4) Fi- 
nally, in disproving any conclusion it is 
not enough to point out its difficulties. 
We must face the alternatives, and show 
that they involve no difficulty as great 
or even greater. 

[35] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

When we apply these principles to our 
estimate of the present situation we shall 
be led to temper the severity of our judg- 
ment. Christianity, whether as a pro- 
gramme for the individual or for society, 
has never promised itself an easy vic- 
tory. It has been a militant religion, 
recognizing evil as a present fact of far- 
reaching ramifications and insidious 
power. The ideal which it holds forth 
is not of a gradual unfolding, taking place 
automatically and inevitably as the 
flower swells and ripens under the sun, 
but a conquest over enemies who need 
to be subdued by an effort of the will, 
and whose resistance, even when suc- 
cessfully overcome, will leave its scars 
behind. As pictured in the New Testa- 
ment, Christianity is a religion of tri- 
umph indeed, but a triumph of those 
who have come through great tribulation, 
martyrs and heroes as well as saints. 

This is so even in the life of the in- 

[36] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

dividual. The great characters which 
Christianity has formed have been formed 
through struggle, and there have been 
times in the life of each when they were 
tempted to despair of success. What 
should we have said of Augustine if his 
"Confessions" had ended before his con- 
version, or of Luther before the great 
experience which revolutionized his life? 
When we say that Christianity is a prac- 
ticable religion for the individual we 
mean that, in spite of personal failure 
and sin, the motives which Christianity 
commands and the inspiration which it 
supplies have proved sufficient in the 
case of a multitude of men and women 
to overcome the opposing forces of pride, 
self-will, and envy, and to produce char- 
acters rounded, harmonious, and com- 
plete. 

How much more necessary is it to 
avoid hasty judgments when we con- 
sider the social practicability of the 

[37] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

Christian religion! For here we have 
to do with a process which instead of 
being complete in a few score years is 
to be measured by millenniums. To 
say that Christianity is socially prac- 
ticable is not to say that it is possible 
to-day or to-morrow, or even in the next 
generation to realize the Christian ideal 
in society — but that the realization of 
this ideal ought to be the aim toward 
which social effort should be directed, 
and by the success or failure of which 
social progress should be measured. No 
doubt a long process of education will 
be necessary. No doubt while the edu- 
cation is incomplete and men who have 
accepted the Christian standard face 
those who either know it not, or who as 
yet reject it, compromises will be inevi- 
table as they are inevitable to-day in 
the life of the individual who as yet im- 
perfectly apprehends or at least imper- 
fectly realizes the Christian ideal. But 

[38] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

just as little as the fact of such com- 
promises makes us despair of the prac- 
ticability of Christianity for the indi- 
vidual or leads us to abandon the Chris- 
tian test of character in favor of one less 
rigorous and exacting, ought the pres- 
ence of these social compromises and 
failures to lead us to abandon our faith 
in the social practicability of Christian- 
ity, provided only we can be assured that 
the direction of social progress is toward 
rather than away from the Christian 
ideal. It is not the fact that we have 
hitherto failed to realize the Christian 
social ideal that should discourage us, 
but the abandonment of the attempt, 
and still more the theoretical justifica- 
tion of this abandonment on the part of 
those who in their private life still call 
themselves Christians. 

Once more, no attempt to measure the 
resources at the command of Christian- 
ity in its world campaign can be ade- 

[39] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

quate which ignores the Christianity out- 
side the organized church. As little as 
the spirit of any people can be measured 
by the state of its contemporary institu- 
tions, as little as the moral resources of 
a city or a state can be estimated by the 
utterances of the politicians who at the 
moment may be in control of the offices, 
can the spirit of Christianity find ade- 
quate expression in the deliverances of 
its official leaders, or its aspirations be 
limited to the programme which at the 
moment may command the assent of 
ecclesiastical authority. Organizations 
are proverbially conservative. They are 
the precipitate of the moral victories of 
the past. Permanence is their ideal 
rather than progress — the thing that has 
been rather than the thing that is to 
be. It is not, therefore, by the official 
utterances of a religion, valuable and 
precious as these may be in their conser- 
vation of the spiritual inheritance of the 

[40] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

past, that we are to estimate the lines 
of its future development. Rather must 
we gain our clew to this in the strivings 
and hopes of the forward-looking, whether 
within the organization or without — the 
men and women who feel within them 
the spirit of the new age and voice the 
ideals which will find expression in the 
institutions of the future. The signifi- 
cant thing for the estimate of present- 
day Christianity is not the fact that the 
official leadership of the church has for 
the moment broken down; that in each 
of the warring nations the ecclesiastical 
authorities have taken their cue from 
the utterances of their respective gov- 
ernments, and with little or no criticism 
accepted the official point of view as 
their own — but that in every nation 
earnest spirits have found this attitude 
spiritually unsatisfying, and are trying 
in their own way to express a more cath- 
olic and comprehensive ideal. 

[41] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

Once more, it is not enough to reject 
any conclusion on account of its difficul- 
ties. We must consider the alternative. 
There are difficulties no doubt in assum- 
ing the social practicability of the Chris- 
tian religion, but are there no difficulties 
in assuming the contrary? What those 
difficulties may be has been brought 
home to the consciousness of mankind 
with a vividness unexampled in history 
by the events of the past two years. 
This war with all its horrors is the direct 
result of the fact that the men in con- 
trol of the policy of the leading Eu- 
ropean nations, whatever their personal 
attitude toward Christianity as a private 
faith may have been, have deliberately 
accepted the thesis of its social imprac- 
ticability and have been sustained in this 
attitude by the public sentiment of their 
respective countries. When the war is 
over and the questions of reconstruction 
are to be faced, this question will have to 

[42] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

be answered by those responsible for the 
terms of peace; whether the philosophy 
which underlies the diplomacy of the past 
two generations is still to control, or 
whether from the mere point of view of 
human prudence and reason, if from no 
higher ground, it may not prove wise to 
try a different method? If the former 
alternative shall prevail, we know what to 
expect. After a breathing space, longer 
or shorter, there will be a renewal of what 
we have been experiencing in Europe on 
a scale as much more portentous and ter- 
rible than what we now see, as the forces 
which in the meantime modern science 
shall have evoked will be vaster and more 
appalling. Nor is this all. With the rapid 
education of the great peoples of the 
remoter East, it is already certain that 
in a time longer or shorter, but distinctly 
measurable, these unnumbered millions 
of men, hitherto largely aloof or qui- 
escent so far as the Western world is 

[43] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

concerned, will be drawn into the vor- 
tex, and increase by their new reserves 
of power the terror of the impending 
cataclysm. As the world grows smaller 
and the distant draws near, the refuges 
which in the past have sheltered neutral 
and peace-loving nations from the storms 
of war will grow fewer and at last dis- 
appear altogether, and the extent and 
duration of the contests that will suc- 
ceed one another from generation to 
generation in dreadful and monotonous 
succession be measured only by the re- 
sources of humanity as a whole. 

Such then is the alternative which we 
face if Christianity be not socially prac- 
ticable. And the question fairly arises 
whether it is not as reasonable to sup- 
pose that the influences which within 
individual communities and states have 
gradually substituted the methods of 
co-operation and of law for those of 
armed force, may not find advocates 

[44] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

ingenious enough to apply them to the 
new situation when once the magni- 
tude of its issues has been faced. 

More is at stake than appears on the 
surface. It is one thing to postpone 
the coming of the Kingdom of God, to 
realize that in a process so complex and 
many-sided, involving so many differ- 
ent generations and races, requiring for 
its completion an education so pains- 
taking and long-continued, generations 
and ages may have to pass before the 
consummation which is desired is 
reached; it is one thing — while the 
process is incomplete — to regard each 
struggle for a better social order, each 
new experience of tragedy following the 
failure of the old as one more step in 
the forward march, one more object- 
lesson in God's great training-school of 
brotherhood — and quite another to see 
in the entire attempt to realize the ideal 
of brotherhood among men a gigantic 

[45] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

self-delusion destined from the start to 
inevitable failure, and to be content for 
oneself with a purely individualistic and 
self-centred faith. 

I do not say that life will not be pos- 
sible with such an outlook. I do not say 
that religion in some form will not sur- 
vive. We know that religion has an in- 
exhaustible vitality, and manifests itself 
in the most forbidding environment and 
the most unexpected forms, but I do say 
that for the thoughtful man more will be 
involved in such an issue than the fail- 
ure of Christianity as a social scheme. 
Even for the individual it is hard to see 
how Christianity can any longer appear 
a practicable religion if by Christianity 
we mean the religion which accepts the 
principles of Jesus as its standard of 
faith and life. The man who believes 
in the fatherhood of God and the brother- 
hood of man may indeed postpone the 
coming of the social consummation. He 

[46 ] 



THE WORLD CRISIS 

may push it into a remote future or shift 
it to another world. But there is one 
thing which he cannot do without the 
surrender of his most vital faith, and that 
is, abandon it altogether. Deceive our- 
selves as we may, try to hide it from 
ourselves as we will, the individual and 
the social gospel belong together, and 
one cannot permanently survive the ship- 
wreck of the other. 

It is in the light of such considera- 
tions that we have to approach our 
problem and measure the arguments 
which make for or against the social 
practicability of the Christian religion. 



[47] 



CHAPTER II 

THE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION 
OF HISTORY 

In the last chapter we considered the 
issue which the war has raised for Chris- 
tian faith. It is, in a word, that of the 
social practicability of the Christian re- 
ligion. Is the religion that we profess 
valid for nations as well as for individ- 
uals — a religion which we can teach in 
our schools, practise in our business, and 
apply in all the complex relations of our 
national and international life ? We con- 
sidered the attempts which have been 
made to evade the issue by those whose 
conception of Christianity is purely 
individualistic and other-worldly, and 
found them unconvincing. Finally, we 
laid down certain general principles by 

[48] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

which the practicability of any mode of 
life must be tested. We have now to 
consider more in detail the consequences 
which follow from these principles for 
the subject of our present inquiry. 

There are three different tests which 
we may apply to the claim of Chris- 
tianity to offer a practicable social pro- 
gramme. We may test it first by its 
diagnosis of the existing situation; 
secondly, by the remedy it offers, and 
thirdly, by the resources at its com- 
mand. 

And first of the diagnosis. If the 
Christian claim be justified, how shall 
we account for the present situation? 
The Christian answer is entirely simple 
and definite. It is because as a matter 
of fact the principles of Christianity 
have never been applied. 

I do not mean this simply in the sense 
in which it is true of our individual fail- 
ures that our accomplishment falls be- 

[49] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

low our endeavors. I mean that in in- 
ternational affairs no serious attempt has 
been made to apply Christian principles 
at all. Even in countries which call 
themselves Christian the energies of 
Christians have, as a rule, been confined 
to dealing with individual lives, and the 
larger problems which concern nations 
and states have, with few rare exceptions, 
been dealt with either on principles of 
temporary expediency or of deliberate 
selfishness. 

In saying this we are saying only what 
is generally admitted. Whatever may 
have been their private faith as individ- 
uals, the statesmen who are responsible 
for the diplomacy of the various Euro- 
pean countries have taken it for granted 
that self-interest must be the supreme 
law of nations. They have made it their 
primary aim to secure advantage for their 
own people at the expense of their rivals, 
and it was the clash which inevitably 

[50] 



INTERPRETATION OP HISTORY 

resulted from this policy of organized 
national selfishness which precipitated 
the war. 

This does not .mean that there has 
been no difference in the standards of 
the different European countries; that 
idealistic motives have had no part to 
play in determining national policy, or 
in dictating the limits beyond which a 
particular state was unwilling to go; but 
it does mean that when we take the his- 
tory of Europe in the large, and trace 
the events of the last two years to their 
remoter causes, we are led to a concep- 
tion of the relation of states radically 
inconsistent with the Christian ideal. 
When in times of peace nations treat 
neighboring nations as enemies in dis- 
guise, and organize their resources, dip- 
lomatic, economic, and military, with a 
view to possible conflict, it takes little 
intelligence to predict the results. And 
this, without a single exception, has been 

[51] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

the state of the leading European nations 
for a generation at least. 

I know no more pathetic utterance in 
all recent history than that sentence of 
Sir Edward Grey in the English White 
Book, in which, pleading against hope 
for one more day's delay before the issue 
is joined, he promises, if the hoped-for 
respite is secured, to do his best to trans- 
form the system of rival alliances which 
had brought the world to the verge of 
war, into a real concert of Europe. 1 It 
is as if he had said: "In the past we 
have tried to preserve the world's peace 
by the appeal to fear; but now that it 
has become clear that this method has 
failed, has not the time come for a dif- 
ferent experiment? Since international 

1 "And I will say this: If the peace of Europe can 
be preserved and the present crisis safely passed, my 
own endeavor will be to promote some arrangement 
to which Germany could be a party, by which she could 
be assured that no aggressive or hostile policy would 
be pursued against her or her allies, by France, Russia, 
and ourselves jointly or separately." (British White 
Paper, No. 101.) 

[52] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

rivalry has brought us to the brink of the 
precipice, why not try international co- 
operation? I for one am ready for it 
and pledge myself, if the rest of you will 
join me, to do what I can to make it a 
success." 

Alas, it was too late. You cannot 
turn back the wheels of history as you 
can the hands of a clock. And all the 
efforts of the diplomats who in the fate- 
ful ten days that preceded the outbreak 
of war worked with a good faith that 
there is no reason to question, to stay 
the impending catastrophe, were neu- 
tralized by forces to the strengthening 
of which they themselves and the peo- 
ples they represented had for years, 
sometimes consciously, more often un- 
consciously, been contributing. 

It is with these underlying causes that 
Christianity is primarily concerned — the 
rivalries, the suspicions, the fear, the 
greed, the pride, of which wars are made. 

[53] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

Unlike much contemporary pacifism 
which attacks war directly as the evil of 
evils, Christianity sees in it a symptom 
of something deeper and more evil still, 
namely, the radical selfishness of the 
human heart. War is not an indepen- 
dent fact which can be isolated from its 
antecedents. It is a part of the process 
of discipline through which by ways 
painful, but none the less salutary, God 
is teaching the nations their essential 
unity, and training them for higher 
things. 

Two elements then enter into the 
Christian interpretation of war: first, the 
sin which has caused it; secondly, the 
divine purpose which is being fulfilled 
through it. It is only as we put the 
present crisis in this larger context that 
we reach what is distinctive in the Chris- 
tian view. 

It was the prophets of Israel who first 
clearly perceived this connection. From 

[54 ] 






INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the first the religion of the Hebrews had 
been a social religion, in the sense that 
the unit with which it dealt was the 
nation, rather than the individuals who 
composed it; but it had been a local 
religion. Its vision was bounded by 
Canaan, and the great world that lay- 
beyond was all but unknown. The 
prophets commanded a broader horizon. 
They first measured the extent and the 
completeness of Jehovah's control. Not 
Israel only was subject to his will, but 
the great world-powers — Egypt, Assyria, 
Persia, with whose fortune that of Israel 
was inextricably involved. All the move- 
ments of contemporary history — the 
march of contending armies, the rise of 
dynasties and the fall of cities — took 
place by His decree and for the execu- 
tion of His purpose. The Assyrian was 
the rod of His anger, 1 the razor with 
which He was to shave head and beard. 2 

1 Isaiah 10 : 5. 2 Isaiah 7 : 20. 

[55] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

Egypt was His servant. 1 Philistia and 
Syria executors of His will. 2 Far from 
the misfortunes of Israel proving that 
God had abandoned them, they were 
rather warnings which He had sent them 
for their good, stages which they must 
pass on their journey to salvation. The 
great thing was to understand their 
meaning, and to learn the lessons which 
they were designed to teach. 

Christianity inherited Israel's faith in 
an all-encompassing Providence. It gave 
this faith new significance through its 
new revelation of God's character and 
of his redemptive purpose made known 
through Jesus Christ. It shifted the 
emphasis from the outward drama of the 
army and the camp to the inward struggle 
of the soul. It spiritualized and univer- 
salized the social ideal; and through the 
resurrection faith opened vistas of com- 
fort and hope beyond the grave, denied 

1 Isaiah 19 : 19-25. 2 Isaiah 9 : 11, 12. 

[56] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the earlier stages of Israel's history. But 
it never wavered in its faith in God as 
Lord of all; of this life as well as of the 
life to come; of evil as well as of good; 
of nations as well as of the individuals 
who compose them. 

This confidence was the result of 
no shallow optimism. When all goes 
smoothly it is easy to speak and to 
think comfortably. Some of us have 
learned this to our cost. We had under- 
estimated the forces which resist prog- 
ress. We had supposed that the great 
prize for which we had been contending 
was to be quickly won; that war on a 
great scale belonged to the past, and 
that our more enlightened age, in spite 
of its underlying selfishness and cruelty, 
could somehow slip easily into the King- 
dom of God. We have had a rude 
awakening, and we are tempted to go 
to the opposite extreme and to wonder 
whether, after all, Bernhardi and the 

[57] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

prophets of force are not right, and our 
ideal of a social order at once just and 
free is not an idle dream. 

Our predecessors in the faith were 
under no such illusion. If they believed 
in peace it was not because they were un- 
acquainted with war. There is no fact 
which confronts us to-day, however ap- 
palling and terrible, which they had not 
looked in the face. If they believed in 
God's control of history, it was not be- 
cause they underestimated the forces of 
evil, but because they had confidence 
that God was able to overrule evil for 
good. 

How the Old Testament lives again 
in the light of contemporary events ! 
What a grim commentary upon Isaiah 
and Jeremiah are the events which are 
even now transpiring in Poland and 
France. The "country desolate," the 
"cities burned with fire," the land de- 
voured by strangers, "the daughter of 

[58] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

Zion left as a booth in a vineyard, as a 
lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a 
besieged city." 1 Then, as now, "the 
hills did tremble, and their carcasses 
were as refuse in the midst of the 
streets." 2 Then, as now, could be heard 
"the uproar of many peoples that roar 
like the roaring of the seas; and the 
rushing of nations, that rush like the 
rushing of mighty waters." 3 Then, as 
now, the swift advance, spreading ter- 
ror with its impression of resistless 
power. 

These are but examples taken at ran- 
dom. How many times they could be 
multiplied if we were to follow human 
history through all the tragedy of its 
checkered fortunes, and recall again the 
sights and scenes which have been wit- 
nessed by Christian men who have yet 
kept a firm faith in the loving Father 

1 Isaiah 1 : 7, 8. 2 Isaiah 5 : 25. 

3 Isaiah 17 : 12. 

[59] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

who holds all in the hollow of His hand, 
and without whose will not even a spar- 
row falleth. 

It is worth while to recall these famil- 
iar facts, because they will help us to 
keep our sense of balance and propor- 
tion. We speak of our experience as un- 
paralleled in human history, and there 
is a sense in which this is true. But the 
statement needs qualification. The pres- 
ent crisis is unparalleled in magnitude, 
but not in quality. Hunger is hunger, 
and pain pain, and death death the 
world over; in Palestine as in Belgium, 
in Rome as in Austria and France. 
And the anguish of hope deferred, the 
shattering of ideals, the bitterness of 
the "I would, but ye would not," were 
as poignant to the patriarchs and saints 
of the first Christian century as they 
can be to us to-day. There is nothing, 
I repeat, that any man or woman or 
child is experiencing to-day which has 

[60] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

not been experienced by others over and 
over and over again. There is no chal- 
lenge to faith in what we see which has 
not been met by faith in the past and 
vanquished. 

What, then, is this faith that rises 
triumphant over every obstacle? What 
does the Christian see as he contem- 
plates the mysteries of God's providence 
in history? He sees three things. In 
the first place he sees God at work for a 
moral purpose. In the second place he 
sees God at work for a social purpose. 
In the third place he sees God at work 
for a religious purpose. Let us try, 
taking the Bible as our guide, to under- 
stand what this triple vision means for 
our faith. 

When we say that God is in history 
for a moral purpose, we mean that His 
chief concern is the making and training 
of character. Not happiness, but dis- 

[61] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

cipline is His primary interest, and hap- 
piness, when it comes, is only the seal 
that the discipline is complete. 

This does not mean, of course, that 
Christianity is an ascetic religion; that 
it has no place and no regard for the 
simpler pleasures and interests of com- 
mon life. The reverse is true. The fig- 
ures which Jesus uses to describe His 
kingdom are the familiar figures of the 
peasant life on the soil — the fisherman 
with his nets, the sower with his seed, the 
father with his children, the friend with 
his friend, the host with his guests. 
The ideal state, when it comes, will be 
one of prosperity and peace. The lan- 
guage of the prophets about the holy 
city surrounded by fertile fields and in- 
habited by prosperous and contented 
people recurs in the Christian's descrip- 
tion of the new Jerusalem. But these 
things are incidental to the main pur- 
pose, which is the establishment of jus- 

[62] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

tice and brotherhood among men. When 
Messiah comes it will be to judge the 
world with righteousness and vindicate 
the moral government of God. 

This explains the Christian's attitude 
toward suffering. It is God's means of 
training character. Far from its being 
a sign of His forgetfulness, the proof of 
His weakness or of His indifference, it is 
through suffering that God teaches His 
most important lessons and opens the 
way for the impartation of His choicest 
blessings. 

Here, too, the work of the prophets 
was epoch-making. In a world full of 
anguish and strife, to a people tempted 
to believe that God had utterly forsaken 
them, they bring their assurance of a 
loving purpose, using evil as an instru- 
ment of good. "You only have I known 
of all the families of the earth," is Jeho- 
vah's message to Israel through Amos, 
"therefore I will visit upon you all your 

[63] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

iniquities." 1 Love is not afraid to in- 
flict suffering, when the loved one is in 
mortal danger. Where there is sloth 
and self-indulgence and unbrotherliness, 
there must be suffering if there is to be 
salvation. 

This does not mean that all suffering 
is due to sin. We shall see presently 
that much suffering has a very different 
explanation. But it means that while 
sin continues, suffering must continue; 
and that where we find evidence on a 
national scale, and over long periods of 
time of social misery and social degra- 
dation, we may be sure that there is at 
root a moral cause. 

The first lesson, then, that comes to 
us as Christians, as we contemplate the 
sufferings of the present, is that of the 
need of self-examination and penitence. 
These great evils have not come upon 
mankind without a cause, and it is our 

1 Amos 3 : 2. 
[ 64 ] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

duty, so far as we can, to understand 
this cause, that we may do our part to 
remove it. 

One of the encouraging features of 
the present situation is that it has put 
the moral issue again in the centre of 
attention. We had been told that man- 
kind had outgrown the sense of sin, but 
to-day we see it revived in the most un- 
expected quarters. It is the subject of 
the diplomatic correspondence. It gives 
its tragic interest to the official papers, 
white, yellow, and gray. The theme of 
them all is moral responsibility. What 
is the contention of each of the parties 
in this gigantic controversy if not that 
they are fighting to uphold the elemental 
principles of justice and morality against 
men who have banded themselves to- 
gether for purposes of selfishness and 
greed? It is not we who are guilty, so 
runs the official apologetic of all the na- 
tions. But that there has been guilt 

[65] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

on a scale the most colossal in history all 
are agreed. What is this but a confes- 
sion that the sense of sin is still alive in 
men, and that the old questions of guilt 
and punishment are still living questions. 
But the Bible not only points out to 
us the inevitable connection between sin 
and suffering, it shows us also what is 
the root of all our misery. This sin is 
unbrotherliness. It is the self-centred 
life, regarding only its own interests and 
indifferent to the needs and sufferings of 
others, which in every age has been the 
spring of social jealousy and social un- 
rest. What the Assyrians planned to 
do to Israel as a whole, individual Israel- 
ites, relying on their superior advantages 
of birth, or place, or wealth, had done 
in effect to their less fortunate fellow 
countrymen. They had treated them 
as the raw material of their own pleasure 
and gain. They had ignored their rights 
as human beings — common children of 

[66] 



INTERPRETATION OP HISTORY 

a common father — to a life that was full 
and free. The national misery which 
involved their own fortunes with those 
whom they had despised and oppressed 
was the natural and inevitable conse- 
quence of the national sin. 

We stand too near the great crisis of 
our time to attempt any judicial appor- 
tionment of guilt or blame. That will 
be undertaken in due course, and before 
the bar of history each will be obliged 
to answer for the things done and left 
undone. But back of the question of 
immediate responsibility — the question 
of who touched the spark which caused 
the great explosion — there is the deeper 
question of the underlying conditions 
which made the explosion inevitable 
when the spark was applied. Here there 
can be no easy shifting of responsibility. 
Each of us has his share to bear in the 
common burden of sin. Whatever dur- 
ing all the years that have gone has sown 

[67] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

envy and distrust between individuals 
and nations; wherever the weak have 
been oppressed and the longing for free- 
dom has been stifled; wherever men have 
thought basely of their fellows, attribut- 
ing to them conduct and desires which 
they would despise in themselves; wher- 
ever brute force has been magnified 
as the supreme reality, and the power 
of love has been belittled or denied; 
wherever, in short, individuals and na- 
tions calling themselves Christian have 
denied by their conduct the religion 
they profess, there they have been lay- 
ing the train which was some day des- 
tined to explode in bitterness and hate. 
As certainly as day follows night, so cer- 
tainly suffering follows sin. It is futile 
to cry, Peace, Peace, when there is no 
peace. It is idle to expect peace where 
the causes which produce war remain 
unremoved. 

There is nothing, therefore, in what 

[68] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

we see to dismay or to discourage us; 
nothing that we could not have pre- 
dicted if we had read our Bibles aright. 
What we see, so far from being a dis- 
proof of God's moral government of 
men, is the most august demonstration 
the world has yet seen of the inexorable- 
ness of the moral law and the inevitable- 
ness of the penalties which follow its 
violation. Once again God is teaching 
us by the most terrible of all examples 
that the one sure guarantee of peace is 
justice between nations and brotherhood 
among men. 

And this brings us to the second article 
in the Christian philosophy of history — 
that God's purpose in history is a social 
purpose. It is not simply the training 
of the individual as an individual, but 
the establishment of the Kingdom which 
is his supreme concern, and this intro- 
duces complications into the situation. 

[69] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

It explains the strange phenomenon, so 
baffling to faith, of the suffering of the 
innocent with the guilty. 

From the beginning this has been the 
crux of the problem of suffering. It was 
not hard to understand suffering where 
there was sin. The mystery was rather 
on the other side, that so often the wicked 
seemed to escape their just punishment. 
But that the righteous should suffer 
while the wicked went scot-free, this 
seemed a challenge of God's moral gov- 
ernment so staggering that for long — 
even in the face of the most convincing 
evidence — men refused to believe in the 
fact. We see this in the attitude of 
Job's friends — when they insist, in spite 
of Job's denial, that where there is so 
much suffering there must have been 
corresponding sin. We see it in the 
protest of Jeremiah and Ezekiel when 
they repudiate the old proverb: "The 
fathers have eaten sour grapes and the 

[70] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

children's teeth are set on edge." * And 
yet it remains true that the innocent do 
suffer with, and for, the guilty, and that 
the iniquities of the fathers are visited 
upon the children unto the third and 
fourth generation. What does it mean? 
There are two things which it might 
mean. One is that the ultimate reality 
is force, and that the Christian faith in 
the loving Father, who cares for each one 
of His human children, is without foun- 
dation in fact. The other is that the 
individual is not the final unit; that be- 
cause God's plan is social, a family, and 
not simply a collection of unrelated sons 
and daughters, His method of training 
must be more complex than would be 
the case if He were dealing with isolated 
individuals. It is the latter which is 
the Christian view. God's method is a 
method of redemptive love, and redemp- 
tive love saves by vicarious suffering. 

1 Jer. 31 : 29, 30; Ezek. 18 : 2, 3. 
[71] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

Of all the revolutions in human valua- 
tion I know of none more revolutionary 
than this. It is the supreme example 
of Nietzsche's Umwerthung alter Werthe. 
We glean some estimate of it in the awed 
surprise with which the great prophet 
of the Exile records the story of his own 
discovery as he follows the experience 
of the suffering servant. "He was de- 
spised and rejected of men, a man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief; and 
as One from whom men hide their face 
He was despised, and we esteemed Him 
not. Surely He hath borne our griefs 
and carried our sorrows; yet we did 
esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and 
afflicted. But He was wounded for our 
transgressions, He was bruised for our 
iniquities. The chastisement of our 
peace was upon Him, and with His 
stripes we are healed." l The righteous 
suffer for the wicked that the wicked 

1 Isaiah 53 : 3-5. 
[72]' 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

may be saved. This is the Christian 
solution of the problem of problems, the 
suffering of the innocent with, and for, 
the guilty. It is God's method of re- 
demption, the method of vicarious suffer- 
ing, the method which finds its supreme 
example and seal in the cross that was 
set up on Calvary. 

It is not easy to exaggerate the im- 
portance of the cross for Christianity. 
It dominates our theology. It sets the 
tone of our religious feeling. It gives 
the key to our theodicy. Where other 
religions have shrunk from pain as the 
supreme evil, or turned aside from it as 
the supreme mystery, Christianity looks 
it full in the face and finds in it the price 
of salvation. "Him who knew no sin, 
God made to be sin on our behalf that 
we might become the righteousness of 
God in Him." 1 

But it is a question whether even yet 

1 U Cor. 5 : 21. 
[73 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

we have learned the full meaning of the 
cross. Its very wonder has shrouded it 
in an artificial mystery. It has been 
isolated from all other human experi- 
ences as an event wholly sui generis. It 
has been explained as God's method of 
dealing with the sin of the individual — 
your sin and mine — the way in which the 
burden of the guilty soul has been shifted 
to the shoulders of the guiltless Christ. 

But the cross has another and an even 
deeper meaning — a meaning not individ- 
ual merely, but social. It is the supreme 
revelation of a law that is valid every- 
where and always, the law of the soli- 
darity of all mankind in the moral life. 
It is not simply that Christ was willing 
to suffer for my sin. It is that, being 
what He was, He could not but suffer for 
it. When He became man it was not 
merely as an isolated individual, but as 
a member of the human family. He 
became involved in all the fortunes of 

[74] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

the race, subject to that mysterious law 
of which we have spoken, that binds us 
all up together in one common bundle of 
life, so that not one of us can live for 
himself alone, but each is involved, for 
good or for evil, in the fortunes of all 
the rest. 

How much this consciousness of hu- 
man solidarity has been reinforced by the 
events of the past two years! We are 
learning in a terrible text-book the truth 
of the old words that God has "made 
of one every nation of men." We have 
seen the war reaching beyond the nations 
immediately engaged, and laying its ruth- 
less and destroying hands upon peace- 
loving and inoffensive people. There is 
not an island so remote but feels the 
electric shock. There is not a man or 
woman so humble but on their shoulders 
some new burden will be laid as a direct 
result of this war. The time has gone 
by when any nation can say to other 

[75] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

nations: " It is no concern of yours what 
I do to my neighbor." For good or for 
evil (for evil certainly if not for good) 
we are members one of another. We 
have been told it before, we know it 
now. 

But there is another side to this mat- 
ter of human solidarity which it is just 
as important for us to understand, and 
that is its function as an agent of salva- 
tion. We have learned that there is a 
divine law which involves us all alike 
in the consequences of past sin. We 
have yet to learn that the same law may 
be made equally effective in the trans- 
mission of good. 

And yet this, too, is the lesson of the 
cross. There is a contagion of good as 
well as of evil. As the sin of mankind 
brought suffering to the innocent Christ, 
necessarily, and as part of God's law, so 
the courageous acceptance of that suffer- 
ing by Christ brought salvation to sin- 

[76] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ful mankind, with an equal necessity, 
and as part of a law equally divine. In 
redemption, as in suffering, Christ is the 
type of humanity at its best. What was 
true of Him on the supreme scale, and 
in exceptional degree, may be true on a 
lesser scale, but no less truly in the case 
of every man or woman who follows Him 
in His path of loving sacrifice, and has 
learned from the heart to pray His prayer 
after Him, "Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do." Paul 
filling up on his part "that which is lack- 
ing of the afflictions of Christ . . . for 
His body's sake, which is the Church," 1 
Latimer bidding the faltering Ridley 
"Be of good comfort, and play the man," 
since "we shall light such a candle by 
God's grace in England as, I trust, shall 
never be put out," are but the most con- 
spicuous examples of the great company 
of every name and age who, having fol- 

1 Col. 1 : 24. 
[77] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

lowed Christ in His sufferings, have 
shared with Him also the triumph of 
sacrificial love. 

It is in this spirit that the Christian 
must contemplate the terrible events 
through which we are passing. As they 
are the supreme proof of the solidarity 
of mankind in suffering, so they offer 
the supreme promise of the solidarity 
of mankind in salvation. If the suffer- 
ings which this great war lays upon the 
innocent breed only feelings of bitterness 
and hatred; if they are met with the 
resolve to return the same in kind with 
interest to the oppressor when the bal- 
ance of power inclines to the other side; 
if the answer (the final answer, I mean) 
to a desolated France be a ravaged Ger- 
many, then this war will prove but one 
more chapter — the most terrible to date 
— in the long story of bitterness and 
hatred of which history is full. But if 
the sufferers can learn from Christ His 

[78] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

lesson of forgiveness; if they can see 
in their experience, as He saw in His, 
the price of salvation not for themselves 
only, but for those who have done them 
wrong; if their experience of the evils 
of war make them but the more resolute 
and the more courageous in their pur- 
suit of a just and lasting peace, then the 
outcome of the great struggle may be a 
new era of mutual understanding, and 
the blood of the martyrs prove once 
again the seed of a new and a better 
Church. 

Much has been said of the compen- 
sation which is to be given to Belgium 
when the war is over. What compensa- 
tion can be given to a country which has 
suffered what she has suffered and is 
suffering? Will you give her money? 
Will money bind up her broken hearts, 
turn gray hairs brown, and recall her 
sons and daughters from the grave? 
Will you renew the guarantee of her in- 

[79] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

dependence ? What treaty that the hand 
of man can write can rid her of the 
haunting sense of insecurity which is the 
legacy of human faithlessness where faith 
was due? There is one gift which could 
be given, and one only, which would de- 
serve the name of compensation, and 
that is the knowledge that through her 
suffering, appealing to mankind as no 
national suffering has done since the days 
when Israel's tragedy lent the Prophet 
his figure of the Christ to come, there 
had been born in every country in Chris- 
tendom such a sense of the futility and 
wickedness of war, such shame at the 
profanation of the Christian name by 
deeds essentially anti-Christian, such a 
searching of heart as to the causes of 
this pitiable relapse to barbarism and 
penitence for whatever in the life of each 
had made it possible; above all, such 
determination that such a tragedy should 
never happen again, as should mark the 

[80] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

end of this whole dark chapter of human 
history and usher in a new era of con- 
fidence, brotherhood, and peace. 

Is it to be so? That depends upon 
the power which is really strongest 
in history, whether the God in whom 
we believe — the God of righteousness 
and wisdom and love — is really in con- 
trol. 

And this brings us to the third article 
in the Christian philosophy of history, 
the most significant and momentous of 
all, and that is that God is in history for 
a religious purpose, a purpose, that is 
to say, which involves the training of 
man for fellowship with God, and man's 
consciousness of God's solidarity with 
him in all his experiences. 

Here, too, we have to do with an in- 
sight slowly won, and often inadequately 
grasped. At first men thought of God 
as outside of the drama of history — the 

[81] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

spectator, the playwright; if acting at 
all, only occasionally, at set times and 
for specific purposes, but not himself in- 
volved in His inner life in the fortunes 
of the human actors He set in motion. 
This was, on the whole, the dominant 
Greek conception, and it recurs again 
and again in Christian history. God is 
the onlooker, sympathetic indeed, and 
well disposed, whose great calm we may 
hope to share in the good time coming 
when this life is over, and the other which 
lies beyond has begun. 

But the prevailing Christian concep- 
tion is very different. It is not merely, 
as we have seen, that God is in history, 
immanent as well as transcendent, actor 
as well as spectator; but that He is in- 
volved in His inmost life in the fortunes 
of the human participants. He not only 
acts, He cares. When Israel sins, the 
burden falls not on man only, but on 
God. He is like the husband whose wife 

[82] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

has committed adultery; * the father 
whose children have rebelled against 
him. 2 If he punishes, it is not because 
he is indifferent or angry, but because 
he earnestly desires their moral good. 
There is no suffering of theirs in which 
he does not share. "In all their afflic- 
tion He was afflicted; ... in His love 
and in His pity He redeemed them; 
and He bare them and carried them all 
the days of old." 3 

It is only in the light of this truth 
that we grasp the full meaning of the 
cross. I have spoken of it in its human 
significance as a revelation of the law of 
vicarious sacrifice which is valid for man 
as well as God. But this is only one 
side, and not the deepest, of its mean- 
ing. It is the revelation of the heart of 
God. It shows God involved with us, 
in our deepest tragedy, fellow sympa- 

^Hosea 1, 2. 2 Deut. 32 : 6, 20. 

3 Isaiah 63 : 9. 

[83] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

thizer with us in our sorrow, fellow 
sufferer with us in our sin. It is the 
assurance that the pain which we suffer 
is not wantonly sent. It is the supreme 
pledge that the ultimate outcome will 
be good. 

Here, and here alone, do we find the 
complete Christian theodicy, our ground 
for faith in the essential goodness of the 
world. We win this faith, not by ignor- 
ing evil, or by belittling it, but by trans- 
figuring it with the glory of the Divine 
sympathy and the serenity of the Divine 
purpose. It is a great thing to feel that 
our suffering may have a part to play in 
promoting human progress; it is an even 
greater to realize that through it we may 
gain an insight into the heart of God. 

Here, too, with much that is baffling 
and discouraging, the war has brought 
us unexpected reinforcement of faith. 
Where the mind sees only difficulty, the 
heart has its own logic, and in the pres- 

[84] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

ence of a need too great for human help, 
God finds his opportunity of self-revela- 
tion. 

Illustrations of this fact have been 
coming to us from every army in the 
field. Wherever we turn we hear of the 
spirit of prayer in the trenches. The 
Russians kneel before their priests to re- 
ceive their blessing before they advance 
to battle. The French priests are on 
the firing-line, ready at any moment to 
celebrate a mass or to read a prayer for 
the dying. From the English lines come 
stories of religious revival. From Ger- 
many we hear of filled churches, and of 
the revival of the spirit of prayer. Let- 
ters from the front breathe an unwonted 
seriousness. To many a man who sel- 
dom named the name of Christ, he has 
become a familiar friend. 

"Involuntarily," writes a Berlin 
teacher serving in the trenches in Poland, 
"thoughts turn from this world to the 

[85] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

regions beyond. Spontaneously one feels 
one's way back to God, and realizes the 
great blessing of the church. Sometimes 
when we were compelled to he still on the 
firing-line under a most intense shower of 
bullets many hands were folded and many 
lips moved in silent prayer, while others 
told their rosaries. Afterward one can 
see the expression of joyful peace on all 
faces." 

The same experience is put more 
naively by an English Tommy in the lines 
entitled, "Christ in Flanders." 

"We had forgotten you, or very nearly. 
You did not seem to touch us very nearly. 
Of course we thought about you now and 

then, 
Especially in any time of trouble. 
We knew that you were good in time of 

trouble, 
But we are very ordinary men. 

"And there were always other things to 
think of, 

[86] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

There's lots of things a man has got to 

think of; 
His work, his home, his pleasure, and his 

wife; 
And so we only thought of you on Sunday, 
Sometimes perhaps not even on a Sunday, 
Because there's always lots to fill one's life. 

"Now we remember, over here in Flanders. 

It isn't strange to think of you in Flanders. 

This hideous warfare seems to make things 
clear. 

We never thought about you much in Eng- 
land. 

But now that we are far away from Eng- 
land, 

We have no doubts; we know that you are 
here." 

No doubt there is another side to the 
picture. To many the war has been 
only benumbing and brutalizing, accen- 
tuating tendencies to evil already pres- 
ent, but till now held in check. But for 
the more thoughtful and earnest it has 
acted as a call to religion, reviving the 
consciousness of the God in whom till 

[87] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

then they had scarcely realized they be- 
lieved. 

There is a truth here of which we need 
to be constantly reminded. In times of 
prosperity, when life is easy, and plea- 
sure the chief preoccupation, it is easy 
to forget God. The factors in our en- 
vironment which we can see and handle 
and measure seem entirely adequate to 
account for the results we experience, 
and the arguments of the sceptic who 
finds God a needless hypothesis win a 
ready assent. But when trouble comes 
and the familiar props fail us, we find 
to our surprise that there is something 
in us of which we had not taken account. 
The conclusions to which our logic seemed 
forcing us become suddenly intolerable. 
We awake to the consciousness of the 
Great Companion, and we look up and 
take courage. 

We who are religious teachers have 
been slow to learn this lesson. We have 

[88] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

thought that we could prove God by 
reason to men who had not yet discov- 
ered His presence in experience. We 
have constructed syllogisms and balanced 
probabilities, and met the arguments of 
our opponents with counter-arguments, 
and we have been surprised that the con- 
viction which we hoped to produce did 
not follow. 

But this is because we have been pro- 
ceeding in the wrong way. We have 
argued where we should have assumed. 
It is not our place to prove to men 
without God that God exists, but to 
point out to men already in contact with 
God through nature, through history, 
through their own personal life, the mean- 
ing of their experience. 

This does not mean that reason can 
do nothing to help faith, but only that 
it must be used in the right way. The 
true function of a religious philosophy is 
not proof but interpretation. It is its 

[89] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

task to point out the experiences of the 
soul, out of which, as a matter of fact 
and not of theory, faith in God grows, 
and the needs of the heart to which faith 
in Christ answers. 

How many they are! There is the 
need of guidance as we face the mystery 
of life and realize how many questions 
there are which we cannot answer. There 
is the need of comfort as we meet life's 
disappointments and failures. There is 
the need of forgiveness as we realize 
with shame our own personal shortcom- 
ings and sins. There is the need of in- 
spiration as the monotony of life's rou- 
tine dulls our sensibility and renders us 
unresponsive to new appeals for service 
and for heroism. There is the need of 
companionship as one by one the old 
friends drop away and there are no new 
ones to fill the accustomed places. Above 
all, there is the need of hope as we face 
such an impasse as seems to confront the 

[90] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

world to-day, and we are tempted to 
despair of any guidance wise enough to 
find a way out. 

These elemental needs and experiences 
of the soul are the real ground of our 
faith in God. It is our privilege to in- 
terpret their significance to those who 
have not yet discovered it, and so to di- 
rect the latent energies of the soul into 
their appropriate channel. 

This was Jesus' way. He did not try 
to prove to men that God existed. He 
took that for granted. But He talked 
to them about their Father, His care of 
them, His plans for them, their duty to 
Him, and He urged them to put His 
teaching to the proof, and to see if it 
did not come true. 

This too was Paul's method. He never 
talked to men as if they were without 
experience of God. He came to them 
as bringing a fuller message about the 
God they knew already in part, and wor- 

[91] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

shipped imperfectly. He spoke out of 
experience to experience, and his appeal 
was always to a more perfect experience. 

This has been the method of the great 
evangelists of every age. They have 
preached God as the most real and the 
most familiar of facts, and trusted the 
conscience of their hearers to answer 
with an Amen. And now the war has 
come to prove that they were right — 
that in the very quarters where God 
seemed most forgotten, His Spirit has 
been at work all the time, and it needed 
only the occasion to reveal His presence. 

It is this discovery of God's present 
companionship in trial and danger, which 
is our deepest ground for faith in immor- 
tality. Immortality, as the Christian 
conceives it, is more than a substitute 
for joys denied here, a compensation for 
suffering and limitations otherwise insup- 
portable. It is the completion of a fel- 
lowship begun here; the consummation 

[92] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

in all its richness and fullness, of a Di- 
vine companionship which has already 
made life supremely satisfying. It is 
not because life means little to us that 
we desire to live by and by, but because 
Christ has filled life so full of undreamed- 
of possibilities; has made personality so 
much bigger and better a thing than we 
had dared to hope it could be. 

Nowhere is this consciousness of life's 
inherent value more vivid than in the 
case of the young. When one reads the 
casualty lists that are published week by 
week, and realizes how many of those 
who have fallen are only boys at the very 
threshold of their lives; when one sees 
the portraits of the bright young faces 
which fill page after page of the illus- 
trated papers, so full of hope and en- 
thusiasm and the joy of life, one feels 
that if there be any reason in the world, 
there must somewhere be a place where 
these unused powers shall find employ - 

[93] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

ment, and these unsatisfied desires satis- 
faction. 

And it is not simply the number of 
these young lives that forces upon us 
the question of another life. It is their 
quality. It is the new revelation which 
this war has brought of the inherent 
dignity of human nature, of man's ca- 
pacity for courage and sacrifice and loy- 
alty. Surely a being as great as man is 
showing himself to be is made for some 
end that endures beyond the span of this 
life. Surely the God who has fashioned 
such finely tempered instruments will 
not suffer them to rust unused. 

It is in this faith, and with this in- 
sight that we must face the crisis which 
has come upon us. There are many 
pressing duties which the hour has 
brought, duties of action, duties of de- 
cision, duties of endurance. But, press- 
ing and important as these duties may 
be, there is a duty still more pressing 
[94 ] 



INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 

and still more important; and that is 
to bear our part in the inner contest 
which is to decide whether the ultimate 
outcome of all our struggle shall be a 
victory for faith or for unbelief. Is 
force to be supreme in the world, or is 
there something stronger still — the love 
that bears and forbears, that "suffereth 
long and is kind," that "taketh not 
account of evil," that "rejoiceth not in 
unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the 
truth"? 1 Is Christ to be the ultimate 
conqueror or the Superman of Nietzsche ? 
This is the question of questions, and the 
scene of its ultimate decision is the heart 
of man. 

This, then, is the call that comes to 
us who call ourselves Christians, in this 
hour that tests men's souls. It is a call 
to inner clarity and freedom that, as 
we study the working of God's provi- 
dence in history, we may do so by the 

1 1 Cor. 13 : 4, 5, 9. 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

light that shines from His Divine Spirit 
in our own hearts. It is a call to con- 
fidence and courage, that through our 
experience of God's present working in 
the soul of man we may win assurance 
of that larger life to which He is leading 
us in the better country that is still be- 
yond our sight. Above all, it is a call 
to fellowship in service that, as men of 
faith and brotherly love, enlisted under 
Christ for the struggle against the inner 
passions that are more deadly than any 
outward foe, we may make our contribu- 
tion to the history that is to be. 



[96] 



CHAPTER III 

THE CHRISTIAN PROGRAMME FOR 
HUMANITY 

From diagnosis we turn to remedy; 
from the explanation of the causes of 
the war to the method by which it is 
proposed to neutralize them. Here too 
the Christian proposal is entirely simple 
and definite. It is a change of spirit. 

Suppose peace were to be declared to- 
morrow. What good would it do if there 
were no change in the attitude of the 
nations which are fighting? If the fear 
and suspicion and mistrust and hatred 
that are so much in evidence to-day were 
still to persist; if the mad race of arma- 
ments by land and by sea were to go 
on unchecked; if each man and woman 

[97] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

and child in each of the countries osten- 
sibly at peace knew that the respite from 
slaughter, whether longer or shorter, was 
to be used by each in devising means 
for being deadlier and more dangerous 
still when the breathing space should be 
over and the battle be on again — would 
such peace as this be worth while ? Could 
we in good conscience pray for it? 

Ah, no, it is something different that 
we have in mind. We want a peace that 
will be lasting and permanent because it 
springs from confidence and good-will. 
Such a peace as exists between the differ- 
ent States of this country, once rivals in 
arms; between the provinces of Ger- 
many, once independent and hostile 
states; between Canada and the United 
States, where for a hundred years along 
a frontier three thousand miles long no 
rifle has been discharged, and the foot- 
step of no watching patrol resounds. 
We want a peace that frees men not 

[98] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

simply from the experience but from the 
nightmare fear of war, which releases 
energies that would otherwise be diverted 
to preparation against the inevitable 
catastrophe and turns them to the pur- 
suit of righteousness and the realizing 
of spiritual ideals. 

For this more is necessary than the 
cessation of fighting. There must be a 
change in the spirit of the fighters. An 
armistice is not peace, whether it last 
for a week or for a generation. We want 
more than the silencing of cannon and 
the disbanding of armies. We want a 
change of mental attitude toward this 
whole matter of peace and war so funda- 
mental and revolutionary as to require 
a complete reconstruction of the prin- 
ciples upon which the relations between 
nations have hitherto rested. War, as 
we have seen, is, after all, only a symp- 
tom, and no remedy which deals with 
symptoms alone can effect a complete 

[99] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

cure. War is the result of a mental atti- 
tude of suspicion, rivalry, and distrust 
which has in turn been engendered by 
centuries of social wrong. A peace that 
involved the continuance of these senti- 
ments and the perpetuation of these 
wrongs would be as unstable as it would 
be unsatisfying. The true remedy lies 
deeper in the removal of the causes of 
enmity, and this is possible only through 
the practice in national and international 
as well as in individual relations of the 
Christian principles of co-operation, sym- 
pathy, and service. 

Jesus had a name for the society which 
is characterized by this spirit. He called 
it the Kingdom of God. By the King- 
dom of God we mean the new social order 
in which the principles of Christ shall 
dominate all the relations of life; a so- 
ciety in which trust shall replace fear, 
love take the place of strife, co-operation 
of selfish competition; in which helpful- 

[ 100] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

ness shall be the test of greatness, and 
the supreme reward, the consciousness of 
having deserved well of one's kind. 

Three points need emphasis in con- 
nection with this definition of the King- 
dom. In the first place, its extent; in 
the second place, its nature; in the third 
place, the means of its realization. 

In the first place, its extent. It is a 
universal kingdom, taking in all races 
and all ages, including the living and 
the dead. In contrast to all tribal and 
national religions, Christianity is inter- 
national. Its unit is humanity ; its stand- 
ard for nations as well as for individ- 
uals the family; its sanction the loving 
will of the Father-God. War is the ne- 
gation of all these. Its ideal is that of 
the conqueror, its unit the nation armed; 
its standard enlightened self-interest; its 
sanction force. War, therefore, not sim- 
ply in its consequences but in its ideals, 
is the uncompromising foe of all in which 

[1011 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

as Christians we believe and for which 
we ought to strive. 

This does not mean that Christianity 
ignores national distinctions any more 
than that it ignores individual distinc- 
tions of capacity and of function. On 
the contrary, as we shall see presently, 
it gives them new dignity and impor- 
tance. But it is true that it refuses to 
regard them as ultimate. They exist 
not for their own sake, but as part of a 
larger unity to which they contribute 
each their quota, as the individuals who 
compose them add each his part to the 
fulness of the national life. 

In the prophecy of Isaiah there is a 
famous passage 1 which pictures the future 
of the nations in the form of an interna- 
tional brotherhood. It looks forward to 
the time when Egypt and Assyria, the 
former oppressors of Israel, shall be con- 
verted to the true religion and worship 

1 Isaiah 19, 16-25. 
[ 102 ] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

the true God. Led by their own par- 
ticular paths of discipline and of failure, 
chastened by suffering, redeemed from 
sin, they, like Israel, shall enter upon a 
new era of national prosperity and right- 
eousness. The old enmities will be for- 
gotten, the old hatreds outgrown. For 
rivalry will be substituted sympathy, 
and for warfare co-operation. "In that 
day shall there be a highway out of 
Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall 
come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into 
Assyria; and the Egyptians shall wor- 
ship with the Assyrians. In that day 
shall Israel be the third with Egypt and 
with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of 
the earth, for that Jehovah of hosts has 
blessed them, saying: Blessed be Egypt 
my people, and Assyria the work of mine 
hands, and Israel mine inheritance." 

To understand the significance of this 
prophecy we must translate it into mod- 
ern phrase. For Israel read Belgium; 

[ 103 ] . 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

for Egypt, Germany; for Assyria, Eng- 
land, and we shall be better able to ap- 
preciate the prophet's meaning. Let us 
suppose that Belgium had suffered at 
the hands of England also what she has 
suffered at the hands of Germany; and 
the prophet, himself a Belgian, survey- 
ing the misery of his country, for so 
many generations the battleground of 
contending armies, asks himself what is 
to be the outcome of this national tragedy, 
and finds his answer in a new and bet- 
ter future for which it is a preparation. 
"In that day there shall be a highway 
out of Germany into England, and the 
English shall come to Germany, and the 
Germans to England, and the Germans 
shall worship with the English. In that 
day Belgium shall be the third with Ger- 
many and England, a blessing in the 
midst of the earth, for that Jehovah of 
hosts has blessed them saying: Blessed 
be Germany, my people, and England 
[ 104 ] 






PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

the work of mine hands, and Belgium 
mine inheritance." 

It is the Christian picture of the ideal 
society, a society in which brotherhood 
shall be as real between nations as it is 
to-day between the best individuals. 

This suggests a second characteristic 
of the Christian society. It is a spiritual 
society. That is to say, a society in 
which the ties between its members are 
personal and moral, love rather than 
law, loyalty rather than compulsion, the 
free assent of all to a common ideal rather 
than any external device to secure uni- 
formity, whether of action or belief. It 
is a society of brothers freely working to- 
gether for common ends. 

This does not mean that Christianity 
is indifferent to the accepted forms of 
social organization, but only that it re- 
gards these as means rather than as ends. 
Like the nation it has its institutions, 
and has embodied its beliefs in creeds, 

[105 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

and its worship in sacrament and ritual. 
But these exhaust its life as little as the 
life of the nation is exhausted by its con- 
stitution and laws. Behind the church 
that we see, with its organization and 
ritual, there is a greater and a more 
majestic structure — the society of re- 
deemed personalities who own allegiance 
to Jesus Christ, and live for the ends 
which he approves. 

We have been slow to recognize this 
fact. In religion as on all sides of our 
life, that which is visible and tangible 
tends to crowd out the unseen and the 
spiritual. The forms that were devised 
as aids to faith become our masters. 
The institution usurps the place of the 
men and women whose life it was de- 
signed to nourish, and ecclesiastical con- 
formity is made the test of spiritual life. 
Only in times of crisis, like the present, 
when the real issues at stake stand out 
in all their clarity above the mists of the 

[106] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

conventional and the customary, do we 
realize the true significance of the Chris- 
tian ideal as a society of persons freely 
co-operating for a common end. 

And this leads us to consider in the 
third place the means by which the ends 
of the Kingdom are secured. They cor- 
respond to its nature as a spiritual so- 
ciety, realizing its life through the inter- 
play of personalities. Between persons, 
external constraint can effect nothing de- 
cisive. The only effective way to in- 
fluence a spiritual being is through his 
ideals. 

This does not mean, of course, that 
external means have no place in the 
Christian scheme of things. Like all 
other human beings, the Christian is 
housed in the body and must face the 
physical and economic problems which 
life in the body brings with it. Like 
them he must use science, physical, edu- 
cational, social, to subdue the forces 

[107] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

which oppose him and harness nature to 
his tasks. Like them he may be obliged 
at times to use force to resist force, and 
gain security for the peaceful develop- 
ment he requires. But this thing is cer- 
tain, that force as such can never of it- 
self secure the ends he seeks. It can at 
most remove obstacles. It cannot build 
the Kingdom of God. For this there is 
but one way open to Christians, the 
trust and love that beget answering 
trust and love in others. 

Like all our greater problems, then, 
this of Christianizing society proves to 
be psychological. It is a question of 
controlling the motives which determine 
the will. Selfishness must be replaced 
by sympathy, suspicion by confidence, 
the rivalry of class or race by the con- 
sciousness of kind. Only when this has 
been done; only as men come to feel 
their kinship with one another, and re- 
solve to live together as kindred should, 

[108] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

can we hope to deal successfully with 
those other problems, economic, indus- 
trial, political, upon the solution of which 
the possibility of an efficient and health- 
ful social life depends. 

Such then is the Christian programme, 
universal in scope, spiritual in nature, a 
society of brothers bound to one another 
by common ideals, common aspirations, 
and common experience. Is it possible 
to realize such a society in fact? 

There are two quarters in which the 
Christian solution of the social problem 
is challenged. It is challenged by ma- 
terialism, and it is challenged by nation- 
alism. The first questions the means 
which it proposes to employ to secure 
its end; the second rejects the end. 

The quarrel of materialism with Chris- 
tianity has to do with its reliance on 
spiritual forces. For faith it would sub- 
stitute science, for the spirit of brother- 
[ 109 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

hood improved economic conditions. Let 
us better man's material welfare, it tells 
us, and his moral status will take care 
of itself. 

In the past Christian theologians have 
dealt with materialism chiefly as a phil- 
osophical theory. They have met its 
arguments with their counter-arguments, 
and in ways made familiar by the theistic 
text-books have tried to establish the 
reasonableness of the religious interpre- 
tation of the world. 

I do not propose here to retraverse 
this familiar ground, but there is another 
and a more convincing method by which 
we may test the claim of materialism to 
give us a satisfying philosophy of life, 
and that is by its fruits. For the last 
two generations the apostles of material 
civilization have had things all their own 
way. They have commanded the ser- 
vices of the ablest men of their day. 
They have gained the mastery of re- 
[no] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

sources undreamed of by their ancestors. 
They have heaped up wealth on a scale 
that to the men of even a hundred years 
ago would have surpassed the wildest 
dreams of avarice; with the result that 
to-day we see all Europe banded together 
to destroy the very wealth which it has 
been laboring so long to produce. 

There is nothing in this at which to 
be surprised. It is only what we might 
have expected beforehand, had we been 
wise enough to learn the lessons of our 
own past. Power alone can give us no 
guarantee of social betterment, and sci- 
ence is power pure and simple, as potent 
for evil as for good. Give power to a 
good man and he will use it beneficently. 
Give it to a selfish man and it will en- 
large his ability to enslave his fellow men. 
Science untamed by love has proved it- 
self the great destroyer, blotting out in a 
single day what it has cost the labor of 
a generation to produce. It is not sci- 
[iii] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

ence that must save men, but faith, 
faith in some beneficent purpose run- 
ning through life, in some wise and lov- 
ing Power on whom we all depend. 

For we cannot escape faith if we 
would. The choice is not between sci- 
ence and faith, but between two rival 
faiths, each using science for its own 
purpose. Of course we need science to 
help us in our constructive work. Of 
course it is our duty to conserve our 
material resources and better our eco- 
nomic condition. But the point is that 
we have power enough now and knowl- 
edge enough to make the world over, if 
only our ideals were right and our mo- 
tives pure. It is our ideals that must be 
changed. If we are to effect any per- 
manent improvement, it is here that we 
must begin. 

So stated, the Christian plan seems 
not so unreasonable after all. For faith 
in self, or class, or race, or nation, it 
[ 112] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

offers faith in Christ as the inclusive 
figure in whom each alike finds its true 
place and rightful consummation. It 
would deliver us from a narrow allegiance 
to one that is world-wide, and for a 
method that knows no final arbitrament 
but the sword, would substitute the 
divine method of forgiveness, of trust, 
and of service. 

Nationalism goes still further in its 
denial. Where materialism questions the 
means, it rejects the end. For humanity 
it would substitute the nation as the 
final goal of effort. Peaceably it may be, 
but if not, by war it proposes to advance 
the national interest and safeguard the 
national welfare. 

You will notice that I have spoken of 
nationalism and not of patriotism. Na- 
tionalism is exclusive in its spirit, exalt- 
ing the nation at the expense of its rivals 
and indifferent to their rights and wel- 
fare. Patriotism is love of one's coun- 

[113] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

try for its higher spiritual aspects, and 
is consistent with cosmopolitanism, in the 
largest sense. Nationalism says, "My 
country right or wrong," and stops there. 
Patriotism adds, "Right that she may be 
kept right, wrong that she may be made 
right." To the nationalist, the nation is 
ultimate; to the patriot, she is the dear- 
est member of the family of nations. 

Nationalism in this narrow sense is 
essentially antichristian. It seeks na- 
tional aggrandizement, or at least, na- 
tional advantage in complete indifference 
to the welfare and the rights of others. 
It has no comprehensive world policy. 
It sees nothing ahead but the continuance 
of the present condition of organized 
savagery we call militarism. Its high- 
est hope is that its own nation may by 
some supreme effort prove itself master 
at last of all its rivals. For this it is 
willing to sacrifice everything, even if 
need be, Christianity itself. 
[ H4 ] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

In times of peace those who hold this 
brutal philosophy hesitate to show them- 
selves in their true colors, but when war 
comes they throw off the mask. War 
gives the advocates of national selfish- 
ness their chance. The altruistic influ- 
ences against which they have to con- 
tend under normal conditions are for 
the moment removed, and they are free 
to organize the nation's life after their 
own ideals. Let them but keep control 
long enough and they will do irreparable 
damage. In spite of all that we may 
say or do, they and not the idealists who 
are dying by thousands at their bidding, 
will organize the new world which is even 
now in the making. 

For the dangerous thing about nation- 
alism, and the point at which its unchris- 
tian character most clearly appears, is 
not the fact that it insists that a nation 
must be ready to defend itself if it should 
be attacked, but that it makes the possi- 

[115] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

bility of war the controlling factor in 
the determination of national policy in 
time of peace. 

I was reading recently an article by 
Mr. Jane, a distinguished English naval 
expert, on the naval policy of the United 
States. In this article he expressed his 
belief that the plans now under con- 
sideration by the American Government 
would prove inadequate, and that it 
would become necessary very largely to 
increase the number of our ships and men. 
His reason for the opinion was that 
while the plans now proposed were ade- 
quate to repel an attack upon a single 
ocean, they were not sufficient to meet 
a simultaneous attack on two. Suppose 
Germany and Japan should unite to at- 
tack the United States, what then ? " We 
can, if we like, consider such a future 
alliance as quite improbable. But navies 
are not built to face probabilities, but 
possibilities." 1 

1 Boston Evening Transcript, July 8, 1916. 
[ 116] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

Could there be a clearer reductio ad 
absurdum of militarism ? Where in every 
other sphere of life we are expected to 
make probability the guide of action, 
here and here alone we are to be gov- 
erned by possibilities. If the Christian 
programme be impracticable what shall 
we say of the alternative which these 
practical men offer us? It is the per- 
petuation to the end of time of the law 
of the jungle, a ceaseless struggle for 
existence in which the weaker go to the 
wall, in which might makes right, in 
which necessity knows no law. Surely 
a philosophy which offers us no outlook 
more attractive than this cannot hope 
permanently to satisfy the human heart. 

And as a matter of fact it does not 
satisfy it. It does not satisfy even the 
men who profess to hold it. When face 
to face with the issue, the most uncom- 
promising imperialist shrinks from the 
consequences of his own logic. He does 
not accept the jungle as his picture of 

[117] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

the ideal state. He believes, at least he 
tells us that he believes, in culture, in 
civilization, in humanity, in the world 
state, and all the other beautiful ideals 
of the spirit. He, too, wishes to organize 
the world for ideal ends, only he does 
not think it practicable to do it in the 
Christian way. 

One of the most remarkable of all the 
features of the present war is that it is 
being fought by men who profess to be 
fighting because of their love of peace. 
These are not mercenaries who are fight- 
ing, soldiers by profession, who follow 
arms because they love war, but civilians 
— lawyers and merchants, farmers and 
professors and clerks — men who have 
left home and family at the call of duty, 
as they believe, in order to preserve the 
institutions of civilized society which 
alone make life worth living. 

The spirit of the soldiers is reflected 
in the language of the governments, 
[lis] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

As we have already seen, no one of 
them is willing to take the responsibility 
of having begun the war. Each declares 
that it is its opponent who must bear the 
blame for this crime against humanity. 
Each insists that it is fighting a defensive 
war, and that its sole object is a just and 
lasting peace. 

On April 5, 1916, the German Chan- 
cellor delivered a speech in the Reichstag, 
in which he outlined Germany's plans 
for the future. Speaking of the condi- 
tions to be faced after the war, he used 
these words: "The Europe which will 
arise from this crisis, which is the most 
severe in the history of all time, will be 
a new Europe in many respects. The 
blood which has been shed will never be 
repaid, and the wealth which has been 
destroyed can be replaced but slowly. 
Europe must be for all nations that in- 
habit it a continent of peaceful labor. 
The peace which ends this war must be 

[119] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

a lasting peace, and must not bear the 
germ of new wars, but that of a peaceful 
arrangement of all European questions." 1 

Similar sentiments have been expressed 
by all the governments at war. I was 
in England during the days that imme- 
diately preceded the declaration of war, 
and I can testify out of my own experi- 
ence to the strength and extent of the 
desire for peace, and to the shrinking on 
all sides from the thought of a European 
war. There was a sense of horror in the 
prospect as of men conscious, like the 
heroes of the old Greek tragedies, that 
they were being driven against their will 
into committing some appalling crime. 

What an unconscious testimony we 
have here to the extent of Christ's in- 
fluence! So far as ideals at least are 
concerned the enlightened public opinion 
of mankind has been converted already. 

1 London Times, weekly edition, April 14, 1916, p. 
871. 

[ 120 ] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

Imagine Julius Caesar apologizing for go- 
ing to war, and justifying the conquests 
of the Roman legions on the ground of 
their benefit to the conquered. Imagine 
Napoleon doing so. So much at least 
Christ has accomplished as to make the 
conscience of civilization uneasy at the 
thought of war, and to make universal 
brotherhood seem desirable, if it could be 
attained. 

This conclusion then follows with an 
irresistible logic: Either the time will 
come when the nations will realize the 
folly of the present system of interna- 
tional anarchy, and seriously attempt 
to apply Christian principles to interna- 
tional affairs, or we must resign our- 
selves to a future of anarchy from which 
the stoutest imagination may well shrink 
back appalled. The appeal to self-in- 
terest has been tried and failed; the ap- 
peal to fear has been tried and failed. 
[121 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

One method only remains to be tried, 
the method of co-operation, of trust, of 
service. 

But is the Christian method practica- 
ble? Is the issue a living issue? Must 
we not confess — shrink from it as we 
will — that there is no alternative open, 
things being as they are, and man being 
what he is, but an endless succession of 
struggle and failure and hate, such as 
has filled the history of mankind in the 
past ? 

Certainly, if the present be the measure 
of the future, there is no alternative. 
If there be no springs of power in hu- 
man nature as yet untapped; if there 
be no reserves of divine reinforcement 
on which we have not yet drawn, then 
indeed we must confess that the case is 
hopeless. 

But that is not the way we act in other 
realms of human experience. The one 
distinguishing and original thing about 
[ 122 ] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

man is the fact that he has never been 
willing to make the past his measure of 
the future. In man alone among the 
living creatures that populate the globe 
we find the creative and prophetic in- 
stinct. Man lives by faith and grasps 
the thing that is to be while yet it seems 
impossible. All that we hold most pre- 
cious in human life, in science, in art, in 
the state, we owe to this indomitable 
hopefulness. There was a time when 
every man's hand was against his neigh- 
bor, and in all the ranges of forest and 
plain that were open to human habita- 
tion there was no oasis where a man 
could take refuge and feel sure that he was 
safe. But we have created states and na- 
tions, and within these at least have sub- 
stituted law for the sword, and confidence 
for suspicion. There was a time when 
the seas were barriers that separated 
men of one land from another by an im- 
passable gulf. There was a time when 
[ 123 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

it seemed as impossible that a man should 
raise himself above the earth into the 
air as that he should pull down a moun- 
tain by his own unaided strength. But 
now the seas have become highways for 
commerce which bind all the world into 
one, and we fly above the mountains 
with a swiftness and security that grow 
more astonishing with every passing day. 
The impossible of yesterday has become 
the possible of to-day. And all because 
men have refused to accept this funda- 
mental heresy of unbelief, that because 
we have failed in the past we must still 
fail in the future. 

So it is in this matter of our Christian 
faith. If the ideal which we hold is 
really a desirable ideal, and if the only 
obstacle in the way of its realization is 
in the human spirit, then we must set 
about changing that spirit and we must 
believe that it can be done. 

Are we told that it is impossible? It 
[ 124 ] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

is being done before our eyes. It is 
being done in the interests of the very- 
policy which is proposed as a rival to 
Christianity. Men are systematically 
training their fellow men to regard the 
citizens of other nations with suspicion 
and distrust, and they are succeeding in 
their attempt. Do not let us deceive 
ourselves into believing that the spirit 
that now reigns over so wide a part of 
the human race is normal or natural to 
man. It is itself the result of a process 
of education, in part deliberate, in part 
unconscious, through which men have 
been taught to associate all good with 
their own country and to look upon the 
countries to which at the time they hap- 
pen to be opposed in policy, as danger- 
ous and unprincipled rivals whom it is 
the highest duty of the patriot to oppose 
and if need be to crush. 

Most ominous of all the revelations 
which the war has brought has been its 
[125 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

disclosure of the extent to which the 
organs of public opinion have been used 
to influence national sentiment against 
peace and for war. Partly this has been 
done through the press, partly through 
the schools. University professors have 
lent themselves to the propaganda, pub- 
licists have preached the gospel of na- 
tional aggrandizement and national glory. 
Children have been taught from infancy 
to look upon the citizens of other coun- 
tries as possible enemies, and upon mili- 
tary service as the highest form of pa- 
triotism. In part no doubt those who 
have taken the lead in this movement 
have been animated by motives with 
which we must sympathize. It is one of 
the tragic by-products of militarism that 
it creates the dangers against which it 
warns. When all Europe is an armed 
camp, it were folly for the patriot to be 
blind to the dangers to his own country. 
One can only honor a soldier like the 

[ 126 ] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

late Lord Roberts, who — in face of the 
danger which he regarded as imminent — 
consecrated his last years to a campaign 
in favor of universal military service for 
England. But behind such sincere and 
unselfish characters, advocates of pre- 
paredness in the interest of peace, as 
chivalrous to their opponents as they 
are loyal to their own, we discern other 
and more dangerous figures, philosophers 
like Treitschke and Cramb, who cele- 
brate war for the moral discipline it 
brings, and others even more sinister, 
to whom war or at least the fear of war 
means personal profit and enhanced pres- 
tige; manufacturers to whom it brings 
increased dividends, capitalists to whom 
it opens new markets, journalists who 
see in it the material of a new sensation. 
It is these men and the influences which 
they set in motion which constitute the 
real danger against which we need to 
be on our guard, the most formidable 

[ 127 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

obstacle to the creation of that saner 
public sentiment without which perma- 
nent peace is impossible. 

What is true of Europe is no less true 
of the United States and of Japan. The 
most serious danger to the future good 
relations between the two countries is 
not any real incompatibility of inter- 
ests, but the jingo spirit. There are men 
to-day on both sides of the Pacific who 
for reasons in part sincere, in part selfish, 
are systematically working to stir up ill 
feeling and suspicion between two neigh- 
bors who for every reason of history, 
of sentiment, and of interest ought to be 
friends. They attribute to each designs 
against the welfare and prosperity of 
the other. They repeat in exaggerated 
form every utterance on either side of 
the ocean which is calculated to wound 
sensibility and inflame passion. They 
speak of war between the two countries 
as not only possible but likely, and urge 

[ 128 ] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

each to arm to be ready for the impend- 
ing conflict. So through the very reit- 
eration of possibilities which as yet have 
no existence beyond their own brain, 
they do their best to make them actual. 

It is such a spirit as this, a spirit of 
suspicion and distrust, systematically cul- 
tivated through a long period of time 
which is responsible for the present war, 
as it has been responsible for most of the 
wars of the past. It is this which has 
changed the war from a war of govern- 
ments into one of peoples, and made it 
the tragic and heart-breaking thing it is. 
It is this spirit which we must somehow 
exorcise if we are to secure the perma- 
nent peace for which we long. 

In England there are factories where 
crippled soldiers are put to work to make 
ammunition to supply the armies in the 
field. In one of these factories a re- 
porter recently found two men, one with 
a deformed limb, the other who had lost 
[ 129 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

an eye. They fell into conversation. 
"It seems a shame to make things as 
makes cripples," said the former sorrow- 
fully. "Sometimes when I think that 
one of my shells might twist a German's 
leg off same's mine, I feel a bit sorry. 
When that happens, I 'ave to 'ave a 
read at a newspaper about poisoned 
gases." 

"I don't mind admitting," said the 
one with the sightless eye, "that I pray 
occasionally that none of my shells will 
ever blow a German's eye out. Under- 
stand I'm no less a Britisher, only human. 
I know what it is to lose an eye, and I 
can imagine what it would be to lose 
two." 

That is how the normal civilized man 
thinks and feels before his mind has 
been inflamed by suspicion and hate. 

Now, what has been done in the name 
of national rivalry and ambition can be 
done, and must be done, in the interest 

[ 130] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

of international brotherhood and peace. 
We must educate men for humanity. It 
may take time. It may take patience. 
We may not live to see it. Our children 
may not live to see it. But in the end it 
will be done. 

What then are the resources at our 
command in this campaign of educa- 
tion? That is our final question. Do 
not let us underestimate them because 
they are thus far disorganized and un- 
vocal. All over the world there are men 
and women in increasing numbers who 
have seen the vision that we have seen, 
of a world which is really Christian, a 
world in which love shall be the law of 
life, confidence the inspiration of prog- 
ress, and forgiveness based upon the con- 
sciousness of common failure open the 
door from the dead past to a new and 
more splendid future. They are found in 
the trenches and in the hospitals, among 

[131] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

the men who have seen with their own 
eyes the hatefulness of war and learned, 
as they could have learned at no less 
a cost, how rare and blessed a thing is 
peace. They are found in a million 
homes among those women who are 
waking to a new consciousness not only 
of the social privileges but also of the 
social responsibilities of motherhood; 
women like those whose indomitable 
optimism makes itself heard across the 
trenches in such utterances as the Christ- 
mas letter of the English women to the 
women of Germany and Austria, and 
the answer that came back from them. 1 
They are found in the ranks of labor 
among men like those German Socialists 
of Munich who in the early months of 
the war drew up a peace programme so 
fair to their opponents that their fellow 

1 These letters, with others of similar import, have 
been reprinted by the Woman's Peace Party, in a tract 
entitled "A Group of Letters from Women of the 
Warring Nations." Chicago. 

[ 132 ] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

Socialists in England could accept it as 
it stood as their own. 1 Above all, they 
are found among those Christians of ev- 
ery name and of every land who have 
grown ashamed of a religion that shelters 
itself under the great name of Christ and 
is content to accept his promise of indi- 
vidual salvation while it turns a deaf 
ear to his call to go out into all the 
world and preach his gospel, not only to 
every creature but in every relationship 
of life. 

But we have other allies still, allies 
of which as yet we have taken too little 
account because they belong in part to 
that unseen world that is still waiting 
to be born. There is that better man 
in men who sleeps in every human breast, 
waiting for the voice that can arouse 

1 For the full text of these proposals cf. the Labour 
Leader for February 4, 1915. They are grouped un- 
der three headings, as follows: 1. Peace on terms that 
will heal fresh wounds. 2. Peace on terms that will heal 
old wounds. 3. Peace on terms that will give lasting 
security. 

[133 J 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

him from his slumbers and summon him 
to that real world for which he was made, 
and in which alone he is at home, the 
man who is lover reverent of women, 
father tender of children, friend respon- 
sive to sympathy, patriot loyal to coun- 
try, worshipper destined for God. This 
undiscovered man, citizen of Christ's 
Kingdom that is to be, is waiting to be 
found and roused and organized for the 
greatest of all enterprises and the most 
splendid of all campaigns. 

He is waiting to be found, did I say? 
Nay, he is here already. Of all the mar- 
vels of this marvellous time none has 
been more wonderful than its revelation 
of the unsuspected moral reserves of 
humanity. The virtues that we had 
thought the prerogative of the few, cour- 
age, consecration, self-sacrifice, faith, are 
found to be the common heritage. We 
had heard that the days of heroism had 
passed forever, that men were engrossed 
[ 134 ] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

in money-getting and money-spending, 
blind to spiritual reality and deaf to the 
appeal of the ideal, and we have wit- 
nessed a rebirth of idealism on a scale 
more stupendous than any that history 
records. We have seen the nations give 
of their best and dearest without a mur- 
mur — mothers their sons, wives their 
husbands, young men their lives, parents 
their homes. We have seen an entire 
people offer its country on the altar of 
freedom, and with the sight there has 
come to us a new realization of the moral 
greatness of humanity, and a new reali- 
zation of its immortal destiny. We know 
now what we had often been told but 
had scarcely dared to believe, that of all 
the powers that inspire action and com- 
mand human loyalty there is none com- 
parable in the range of its influence to 
an ideal. 

And if it be said that this is just the 
tragedy and despair of the situation, 

[135] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

that idealism has proved so lamentably 
false a guide, that the causes that have 
called forth loyalty and evoked sacrifice 
have been narrow and selfish causes, 
the ideals of nationalism and of mili- 
tarism, the answer is that this is true 
only in appearance. It is because these 
causes have stolen the garments of Chris- 
tianity and masquerade as the servants 
of world-wide brotherhood and peace 
that they have gained the whole-hearted 
allegiance of the peoples. Nothing is 
more striking in the whole situation, 
nothing more full of hope for the future, 
than the fact that the old glorification 
of war for war's sake has been so largely 
discredited. Each nation, as we have 
seen, claims to be fighting in self-defense; 
each nation declares itself to be the ser- 
vant of international brotherhood and 
peace, not simply to justify its claim 
against its opponents, but because on no 
other ground could it retain the alle- 

[ 136 ] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

giance of its own citizens. The Christian 
virus has penetrated too far; the Chris- 
tian ideal has struck its roots too deep 
to make the ethics of war permanently 
satisfying to any modern people. 

This then is the great gift which the 
war has brought us: this new revelation 
of the unsuspected moral reserves of hu- 
manity. Once more we have been re- 
minded of that oldest of the truths of 
religion that man is not simply flesh and 
blood, but spirit. When we appeal to 
the ideal in him we are dealing with 
something that is really there; a force 
more potent for good or evil than the 
electricity that lights our streets and 
draws our engines, or the dynamite by 
which we blast our way through the solid 
rock. 

It is in the light of such facts as these 
that we must approach our great task 
of educating men for humanity. When 
we contrast what we are saying and do- 

[ 137 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

ing as we go about our quiet tasks of 
peace, with what our brothers are doing 
and bearing at the front, how little and 
futile it often seems. Do not let us be 
deceived. It is with the moulders of 
ideals that the fate of the future rests. 
When as parents, through the familiar 
discipline of the home, we train our chil- 
dren in common action for an end be- 
yond self; when as teachers, we enlarge 
the range of our pupils' vision, and ac- 
quaint them with the good in other ages 
and in other races than their own ; above 
all, when as Christians we unite with our 
fellow Christians of every land in wor- 
ship of the God of all the earth and con- 
secrate our lives to the tasks of his King- 
dom, we are doing the most important 
and the most practical thing in the 
world: we are generating the forces that 
will inspire the armies of the future. 

Among the French soldiers at the front 
there are some poor fellows who have no 
[ 138] 



PROGRAMME FOR HUMANITY 

friends or relations to write to them. 
To these a distinguished Frenchman has 
addressed a letter which has been pub- 
lished in the daily press. "What are 
you righting for?" he asks, "you who 
have neither wife nor child nor home to 
defend; for whom no mother prays and 
no father waits? I will tell you. You 
are fighting for the future. The others 
are fighting for the past and for the 
present. You are fighting for the French 
children who are just born, for those who 
will be born, that they may be free." 

Ah, yes, it is this love of the future 
that is our hope — the future that we 
may never share, but in which we yet 
believe. We have seen it imperfectly, 
narrowly, from angles which bring us 
into conflict with the vision of our neigh- 
bor; but we have seen it, and some day 
we shall see it more clearly still. The 
little loves will give place to the greater; 
the false patriotisms will be replaced by 
[ 139] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

the true, and in the service of humanity, 
as a whole, all lesser aims and tasks will 
find their rightful and satisfying place. 



[ 140 



CHAPTER IV 
THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

We have considered the challenge which 
the present world crisis presents to 
Christian faith, and the principles by 
which it is to be met. We have studied 
the Christian programme for humanity. 
We have seen that Christianity pro- 
poses to substitute for the present sys- 
tem of organized selfishness a new social 
order, universal and spiritual, a society 
in which helpfulness shall be the prin- 
ciple of action, and the consciousness of 
brotherhood the bond of union, and we 
have seen no reason to doubt that it 
can be realized in fact, if all who believe 
in this ideal co-operate to bring it about. 
It remains to ask what our part is in this 
common task, and how it can best be 
[ 141 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

performed. What can we modern Chris- 
tians do to realize our own ideal? In a 
task so vast and many-sided where shall 
we begin ? 

We must begin where Christ began, 
with the individual. There is no substi- 
tute for Christian character, and Chris- 
tian character cannot be manufactured 
by wholesale. It must be a new creation 
in each individual, consciously facing the 
ideal of Christ, and consciously making 
it his own by a free act of choice. Unless 
we have men and women who believe in 
the Christian ideal for society enough to 
live for it, and if need be to die for it, 
society will never be Christian in fact. 

There is no substitute, I repeat, for 
individual conversion. Public opinion, 
that most potent of all forces in our mod- 
ern world, is what it is because of the 
opinion of the men and women who 
compose the public. If you would change 
it you must change them. And the 

[ 142 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

change must begin, as all changes begin, 
in persons, in the contact of some indi- 
vidual with a new ideal, and the surren- 
der of his will to its appeal. If we are 
to have an army, we must have officers; 
if we are to have followers, we must 
have leaders, and leadership is an affair 
of the individual. 

Trace back any great social move- 
ment you please, and you come at last 
to some individual man or woman. To 
speak of modern nursing means to think 
of Florence Nightingale. To mention 
United Italy means to think of Mazzini 
and Garibaldi and Cavour. What were 
Protestantism without Luther, or monas- 
ticism without Francis of Assisi and Ig- 
natius Loyola? What is Christianity 
itself but the impact upon the spiritual 
life of mankind of that supreme person- 
ality whom we call Jesus ? 

But it is just as true that if you are 
to have an army you must have soldiers. 
[ 143 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

No general can win a battle alone, and 
so again we are brought back to the neces- 
sity of personal work for men. It is not 
enough for one man and another to ac- 
cept the Christian principle, and work 
for the Christian end. We must make 
these principles common property, and 
for that we need missionary propaganda 
on a scale more comprehensive and effec- 
tive than any the world has yet seen. 
The work that the churches are doing 
in their evangelistic campaigns is work 
that needs to be done and must be done 
if the Christian cause is to succeed. 

One of the most surprising features of 
the present situation has been the ex- 
traordinary unanimity of sentiment in 
the different countries at war. There 
was at first a disposition to regard the 
war as having been forced upon the differ- 
ent peoples by their leaders, and each 
nation flattered itself that it was fighting 
not only for its own safety, but to liber- 
[ 144 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

ate the enslaved in other lands. But 
we see to-day that this is in a true sense 
a war of peoples. Only profound con- 
viction as to the justice of their cause 
could move the nations to the gigantic 
sacrifices which the war has laid upon 
them, and convictions do not spring up 
in a night. They are the fruits of a 
process of education carefully planned 
and long continued. It is because day 
by day, year by year, generation after 
generation, men have been preaching to 
Germans and Englishmen and Russians 
and Frenchmen the greatness of their 
nation's destiny and the duty of individ- 
ual loyalty, that the sentiment has been 
created which made each government 
confident of the nation's support when 
the crisis came. 

If Christianity is ever to make itself 

felt as a world power on a scale as vast 

and with results as amazing, it will be 

because of a period of preparation as 

[ 145 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

painstaking, as intelligent and as long 
continued. For a Christian society you 
must have real Christians, and millions 
of them, and these are not made in a 
day or in a year. 

But individual conversions alone, how- 
ever many may be the individuals con- 
verted, will carry us but a little way. 
We must apply the consequences of our 
Christian convictions to society. And 
that means that we must organize. 

At no point is the revolution in our 
habits of thought, which has been brought 
about by modern science, more far- 
reaching than in our conception of the 
nature of human society. Time was 
when we thought of society as a collec- 
tion of individual units, each complete 
in itself. To-day we know that person- 
ality is itself a social creation. We real- 
ize, as it has never been possible to real- 
ize it before, the extraordinary variety 
[ 146 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

and intimacy of the ties that unite in- 
dividuals one with another, not only in 
their economic but in their intellectual 
and moral life. We see that in order to 
influence an individual effectively it is 
not enough to appeal to him directly. 
We must attack his environment and 
change the forces which enter into the 
making of his personality. 

And with this new insight modern sci- 
ence has given us new power. It has 
marvellously increased our resources; it 
has multiplied in ways that stagger the 
imagination the wires that reach from 
one man to another, and created the 
machinery that for the first time has 
made it possible to mobilize all the re- 
sources of the nations and make millions 
of men act with the precision and effec- 
tiveness of one. 

This is something new under the sun. 
Here is a new power put into the hands 
of man which he has never had before, 

[ 147] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

a power which may be used for good or 
for evil, for co-operation or for war. 
The leaders of the church, trained in 
the habits of the older individualism, 
concerned primarily with the forces of 
the inner life, have been slower to dis- 
cover the existence of this power than 
men who have been trained in another 
philosophy and are working for other ends. 
This is the true significance of what 
we see to-day. We are witnessing the 
mobilization of humanity for common 
action on a scale and with an effective- 
ness never possible before. It is true 
that the purpose of this mobilization is 
destruction, and its inspiration distrust, 
suspicion, and fear. But the same forces 
which have been utilized by statesmen 
and diplomats to serve their narrow ends 
are available for nobler uses if only we 
can gain access to the springs of action 
and win the nations to loyalty to a higher 
and more inclusive ideal. 

[ 148] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

Thank God, we are beginning to learn 
this lesson. Even before the war came 
there were many Christians who realized 
the inadequacy of the older individual- 
istic methods, and were working for 
closer and more effective co-operation be- 
tween the churches. These efforts have 
already begun to bear fruit in federa- 
tions, councils, and continuation com- 
mittees. We are mapping out the field 
to be occupied, cataloguing the resources 
at our disposal, laying plans, not simply 
for the present but for the longer future. 
And this is a great step forward. 

For one thing we are beginning to 
deal with the social questions which lie 
at our own door, questions like the drink 
problem, the problem of prostitution, 
the industrial problem in its various 
phases. We see that these are matters 
which concern us as Christians, for which 
we cannot avoid responsibility even if 
we would. We are no longer content to 

[ 149 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

preach or to listen to the gospel on 
Sunday while our lives during the week 
give the lie to what we say or hear. We 
feel that in Christian sentiment we pos- 
sess a power which might be used to 
make the world over if only it could be 
properly unified and directed. 

This movement toward a social ap- 
plication of the gospel is world-wide. 
Wherever you go you will find that 
Christians are aroused to the social need 
and are beginning to turn their convic- 
tions into action. 

When I was in Osaka 1 in April, 1916, 
I found the whole city aroused over 
the proposal to establish a vice quarter 
in the neighborhood of some of the more 
important schools. Public meetings were 
called in protest, and the better senti- 
ment of the community organized so as 
to make the protest effective. 

1 A great industrial centre on the Inland Sea, which 
has been called the Pittsburgh of Japan. 

[ 150 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

It was the same in China. In Hang- 
chow there are but eight hundred Chris- 
tians, but when the government proposed 
to set apart a quarter for public vice in 
the outskirts of the city they conducted 
a campaign so effective that the plan 
had to be abandoned, and I was shown 
with pride the deserted buildings that 
were the convincing demonstration of 
the power of Christian sentiment when 
organized for the common good. 

This is as it should be. In the social 
application of the gospel the place to 
begin is in my relations to my neigh- 
bor across the street. Unless we can 
make our neighborhood Christian we 
cannot have a Christian city. Unless 
we can Christianize our city, we cannot 
hope to have a Christian country. Un- 
less we can Christianize our country we 
must abandon the hope of Christianizing 
the world. 

This opens up a wide field at which 

[151 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

we can only glance. How much it means 
to make a Christian community those of 
us who have tried to attack even a single 
phase of the social problem in a practical 
way know only too well. Whether it be 
the drink problem or the vice problem, 
or the problem of sanitation, or the prob- 
lem of unemployment, we find that we 
are dealing with influences which reach 
beyond the immediate environment and 
causes that had their origin generations 
before we were born. To deal with one 
effectively we must attack the others 
also, and before we realize it we find 
that our attempt to clean up our own 
back yard commits us to a programme of 
social reconstruction on the most com- 
prehensive scale. 

This is the real root of our present 
difficulty. If we want to understand 
the causes of the present international 
crisis we must seek our answer at home 
and not abroad. It is because our own 

[ 152] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

social system is so largely selfish and un- 
christian that it is so difficult to persuade 
men to believe that altruism is feasible 
on a large scale. The man who in his 
domestic relations acts on the principle 
that business is business, is not likely 
to be a believer in the efficacy of love 
as a solution of international difficul- 
ties. 

While these pages were being written 
there was in progress in one of the largest 
cities of the United States a labor dis- 
pute which involved many thousands of 
persons. The industry which was af- 
fected was one in which the rate of wages 
was comparatively low, and the time of 
employment irregular. After years of 
contention and bitterness both employers 
and workers had agreed upon a plan of 
operation which provided a regular 
method for dealing with questions in 
dispute. Representatives of both parties 
met to consider the matter in contro- 

[153] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

versy, and when they were unable to 
agree the subject was referred to a 
committee of arbitration for final de- 
cision. Under this agreement the in- 
dustry had been operating peacefully for 
a number of years. But a few months 
ago when the committee of arbitration 
decided a case adversely to the conten- 
tion of the employers, they refused to 
accept the decision, repudiated their 
agreement, and in order to enforce com- 
pliance with their will declared a lockout 
in the dull season of the year, relying 
upon hunger to bring the workers to 
their terms. 

As to the rights and wrongs of the im- 
mediate matter in dispute the present 
writer is not competent to speak. But 
from the published utterances of both 
sides to the dispute, one principle clearly 
emerges which bears directly upon the 
subject of our present interest. The 
workers contended for some independent 
[ 154 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

tribunal to which disputes should be re- 
ferred for final adjudication. The em- 
ployers refused to concede this. They 
claimed the right to manage their own 
business to suit themselves without in- 
terference or dictation from outside. If 
the workers did not like their action they 
had their remedy at hand; let them 
strike. In other words, the employers 
denied the existence of any paramount 
social obligation. They were individual- 
ists out and out, and they accepted with- 
out flinching the consequence of individ- 
ualism, which is war. What difference, 
one may well ask, is there in principle 
between the attitude of these employers 
and their sympathizers and that of the 
philosophers and statesmen whose un- 
willingness to recognize any higher sov- 
ereignty than the individual state makes 
war the final arbiter in disputes be- 
tween nations? If there is not con- 
science enough in society to deal with 

[155] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

the lesser evil, what hope is there of our 
being able to master the greater ? 

But, thank God, there is another side 
to the matter. If every failure to live 
out Christ's principles at home makes 
it more difficult to live them out abroad, 
the converse also is true. Every success 
at home makes success abroad seem easier 
and more credible. The man who has 
tried arbitration in his business and found 
that it succeeds will be the first to be- 
lieve in the possibility of its application 
to international affairs. The community 
which has found it possible to run a city 
for the benefit of all, and not simply the 
private gain of the few, will not easily 
despair of the world. 

Twenty-two years ago New York City 
was in the grip of a corrupt political 
organization known as Tammany Hall. 
Things had reached such a pass that 
decent men were ashamed of the city, 
and yet the power of the organization 

[156] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

was so great that it seemed hopeless to 
try to break it. 

At this juncture it occurred to some 
public-spirited citizens to attack the 
problem piecemeal. They founded good- 
government clubs in the different quar- 
ters of the city, and began to organize 
their neighbors in each district for the 
study of local conditions. In the new 
interest thus aroused, and the new ac- 
quaintances formed, they soon found 
that they possessed an instrument of no 
small political power. And it was these 
good-government clubs, co-operating in a 
city-wide campaign, which in 1894 suc- 
ceeded finally in defeating Tammany 
Hall and installing a reform government 
in power. 

It is an example which may well en- 
courage us in our plans for our future 
activity as Christians. When we con- 
template the magnitude of the task be- 
fore us we are appalled by its difficulty 

[157] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

and its complexity. Who are we, we 
ask, to think of Christianizing the world ? 
But we do not have to do it all at once. 
Our responsibility is only for that part 
of the task which lies in our immediate 
environment, and is within the compass 
of our strength. But we have this added 
encouragement in our labor, that what- 
ever success we may gain in our par- 
ticular field, will be so much to the 
general good. Any triumph of the Chris- 
tian principle anywhere is so much new 
reason for faith in its applicability every- 
where. 

These principles may help us to think 
our way through some of the practical 
problems which face us in the immediate 
future. They have their bearing, for 
example, upon the question of national 
loyalty. As Christians we cannot ad- 
mit the nationalist's contention that the 
nation is the final unit, and that no hu- 
[ 158] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

manitarian considerations should be al- 
lowed to stand in the way of the national 
interest. Are we therefore obliged to 
conclude that the nation has no rightful 
claim upon our allegiance, and that in 
the alleged interest of human brother- 
hood we must discard patriotism alto- 
gether ? 

To do this would be as unreasonable 
as to conclude that because the law of 
Christ condemns selfishness in the indi- 
vidual, and bids us keep ever in mind 
our relations to the larger unity we call 
the Kingdom of God, the individual has 
no independent value for God, and the 
Christian is under no obligation to de- 
velop his own personality? Individual- 
ism, whether in nations or in persons, is 
the perversion of a good. It is self-de- 
velopment run to seed. But self-devel- 
opment has its place in the catalogue of 
Christian virtues. It is the way we 
make ourselves strong for service. 
[ 159] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

We have learned this in the case of the 
individual. We know that in our per- 
sonal life we are not shut up to the choice 
between selfishness and suicide. There is 
a third alternative open to the Christian, 
and that is self-development for social 
service. The more I have, the better I 
am, the stronger I become, the more I 
have to give. The same law holds good 
in the life of the state. Patriotism is 
God's way of training individuals for com- 
mon action for unselfish ends. With- 
out national self -development there can 
be no effective international service. 

But it is easier to admit this in theory 
than to follow out its implications in 
practice. What does it mean for one 
nation to serve another? In what spe- 
cific ways can this Christian duty be ful- 
filled? 

There are some who interpret service 
in terms of charity. The rich nation 
ought to share its wealth with the na- 

[ 160 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

tions that are poorer; the more advanced 
with the more backward; the nation that 
has escaped the ravages of war with 
those that have experienced its devas- 
tating effects. 

This view of Christian duty has re- 
cently been put before the American 
people in the form of a definite proposal. 
Let Congress at the end of the war ap- 
propriate five hundred million dollars to 
be used for the relief of the sufferers in 
the different countries at war, and for 
the reconstruction of the cities which 
have been destroyed. Is it conceivable, 
we are asked, that such a proposal would 
not be gratefully received? Could we 
imagine any action which could give 
more convincing evidence of the Chris- 
tian spirit or prove a more effective agent 
in promoting good- will between nations? 

With the spirit which inspires this 
proposal one can have only sympathy. 
There is a place for charity in the Chris- 

[161] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

tian catalogue of virtues, and where suf- 
fering has been colossal the scale of char- 
ity should be correspondingly great. But 
charity alone is not enough. It has not 
proved enough in the relations between 
individuals. We have no reason to sup- 
pose that it will prove enough in the re- 
lations between nations. 

There was a time not so long ago when 
individual duty was conceived in terms 
of charity. Almsgiving was the Chris- 
tian duty par excellence. The rich man 
gave of his superabundance to the poor 
man, and the man of moderate means 
to the man who had less, and when he 
had done this he conceived that he had 
done all that he needed to do. 

But we are coming to see that this is 
a wholly inadequate conception of Chris- 
tian ethics. It is not alms that man 
needs but justice; not the alleviation of 
poverty but its removal. What we ask 
of the rich man now is not that he 

[ 162 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

should be kind to his dependents, but 
that he should co-operate with them in 
bringing about a social order in which 
they shall no longer be dependent. More 
precious than gold, more to be desired 
than comfort, is personal self-respect, 
and personal self-respect is difficult to 
the man whose very existence is depen- 
dent upon the bounty of another. As 
has been well said: "He who controls 
the sources of a man's subsistence, in 
effect controls his will." 

What is true of individuals is true also 
of nations. What one nation asks of 
another is not charity but justice. It is 
recognition of its rightful place in the 
family of the nations and the granting, 
not as a matter of condescension but as 
a right, of the conditions which are neces- 
sary to enable it to fill that place with 
self-respect. If we wish really to justify 
our claim to be a Christian nation, we 
cannot stop with the offer of charity, 

[ 163 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

however proper that may be; we must 
be willing to co-operate with other na- 
tions in bringing about such changes in 
the social order as shall make the op- 
pression of the weak by the strong for- 
ever impossible. 

This would involve a change of policy 
so radical that it is doubtful if as yet 
many even among Christians have ven- 
tured seriously to contemplate it. It 
would mean the abandonment once for 
all of the maxim that the policy of any 
country can be determined solely by the 
welfare of its own citizens. It would 
mean the application of the Christian 
principle of trusteeship to natural re- 
sources not simply on the national scale 
now contemplated by our advocates of 
conservation, but in our international re- 
lations. It would mean the rewriting of 
our tariffs and immigration acts from 
the point of view not simply of national 
advantage but of world need. It would 

[ 164 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

mean, in a word, doing for the world at 
large what no single country has yet 
succeeded in doing for its own people, 
namely, making them act and feel as if 
they were really one. 

I say feel as well as act, for in this 
matter of social justice feeling counts for 
quite as much as action. Why is it that 
within the family co-operation is possible 
between strong and weak on a basis of 
mutual self-respect? It is because they 
feel their common unity. Why is it 
that to-day Canada and Australia and 
New Zealand are sending the best of 
their sons to die for England when they 
were free to hold aloof if they would? 
It is because they feel their oneness 
with the mother country. Why is it 
that England herself is co-operating with 
Russia and France, her ancient enemies, 
spending men and money in support of 
peoples whom a generation ago she re- 
garded with distrust and fear? Again 
[ 165 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

it is because she has come to feel that in 
the interests which count for most they 
are really one. If we are ever to change 
our present policy of national selfishness 
for one of brotherly co-operation with 
other nations it will be because we have 
first come to feel toward those nations 
as brothers. 

This does not mean that in our national 
policy there will be no place for tariffs 
or immigration acts; but it means that 
the theory on which they are based will 
be altered. Where peoples represent dif- 
ferent types of civilization, as in the case 
of America and Japan, unrestricted immi- 
gration may prove an evil for both. But 
if so the restriction will be based upon 
grounds of mutual advantage and car- 
ried out in a way to conserve the self- 
respect of both parties. So it may 
prove for the advantage of all the world 
that those countries which in the upward 
march of civilization have attained a 

[ 166 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

higher standard of living should protect 
themselves by tariffs against the com- 
petition which would drag them down 
without uplifting their competitors. But 
here again, if this be the case, the con- 
straining motive for the Christian nation 
will be the advancement of the whole 
rather than the advantage of a part. 

The same principles apply to the treat- 
ment of dependent peoples. It is ab- 
surd to treat savage races as though 
they were on an equality with those 
which have been trained for centuries 
in the school of civilization. Such races 
are children, and must be treated as 
such; but they are children who will 
grow up, and the nation which aspires 
to be really Christian will not forget this 
fact. It will teach them the things they 
need to know in order to walk alone. It 
will not allow unscrupulous exploiters to 
appropriate the natural resources which 
are necessary for their development even 

[ 167] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

if the exploitation bring temporary ad- 
vantage to itself. It will so act that when 
the child grows up he will not find him- 
self robbed of his patrimony. 

Such a change of policy would have 
far-reaching consequences. It would not 
only benefit the countries immediately 
concerned; it would contribute power- 
fully to peace among the nations; it 
would remove one of the chief causes 
which have produced war in the past, 
and hasten the time when the conscious- 
ness of unity which now obtains between 
certain groups of nations shall be ex- 
tended to humanity as a whole. 

Will you think me bold if I venture 
upon a single concrete illustration? I 
have just come from China, that great 
country across the Yellow Sea which is 
now passing through such a momentous 
period in its national history, and every- 
where I found men asking what was to 
be Japan's attitude toward its neighbor 

[ 168 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

in this crisis of its history. It is not my 
purpose to speak of what has happened 
in the past, still less to give counsel as 
to what Japan should do in the immediate 
future. But I may without impropriety 
be permitted as a moral teacher to point 
out the alternative possibilities which the 
situation holds in solution, and to call 
attention to their bearing upon the larger 
world situation of which we have been 
speaking. One is to follow the policy 
of exploitation which, with a few hon- 
orable exceptions, has been character- 
istic of European diplomacy in the cen- 
turies which have passed; to secure such 
immediate advantages as may be gained 
from China's distress, peaceably if pos- 
sible, but if need be by force, regardless 
of the susceptibility of the nation in 
question, and in complete indifference 
to what may be for its national advan- 
tage in the longer future. It is the policy 
of the robbers to whom Jesus referred 

[ 169 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

in the parable of the good Samaritan, 
who finding a traveller upon the Jericho 
road set upon him in his weakness, robbed 
him of his possessions, and departed leav- 
ing him half-dead. 

This is one of the things that Japan 
might do in China, and if she did it she 
would do only what European nations, 
calling themselves Christian, have done 
before. But she would miss her great 
opportunity, and surrender the leader- 
ship of civilization to some other nation 
more far-sighted and more courageous 
than herself. 

The other possibility is that of friendly 
co-operation and brotherhood, a policy 
which should frankly recognize the right 
of the Chinese to the same national 
self-development of which Japan offers 
so conspicuous an example, and which 
should seek to co-operate in every pos- 
sible way with the men in China (and 
there are such men, not a few) who are 
seeking in a spirit of patriotism a solution 

[ 170 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

for their national ills. It is, in a word, 
the policy of the good Samaritan who 
seeing a man wounded, bound up his 
wounds and put him in an inn; but mark 
this well, as soon as he was well enough 
to stand, left him free to take his own 
way without dictation and hindrance. 
Which policy, think you, will in the long 
run prove most to Japan's interest, 
the policy of exploitation or the policy 
of friendship? Which will bind China 
closest to Japan and prove the source 
of greatest strength in years to come? 
Unless all past experience is deceptive, 
friendship pays best in the long run. 
You may hold a man down when he is 
weak, but when he is strong he will do 
the same to you; but help a man up 
when he is down, and when you are in 
need you will find him your helper. In 
our personal relations we have found this 
true; we have yet to prove it true in the 
relations of nations. 

I have taken an illustration from Jap- 

[171] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

anese contemporary history because I 
am speaking to Japanese; but I might 
have applied the principle to my own 
country with equal appropriateness and 
with equal force. I might have spoken 
of the possibilities which face the Ameri- 
can people in dealing with their neigh- 
bor to the south. Into the perplexing 
questions raised by the present Mexican 
situation this is not the place to go. 
But distinct from the question of the 
specific things to be done and still more 
important is the question of the spirit 
which should inspire the action. What 
shall determine the duty of the United 
States to Mexico, the advantage of our 
own nation or the welfare of Mexico? 
When we have secured the safety of our 
own borders and protection for our own 
citizens we shall have taken only the 
first step in our duty as a Christian na- 
tion. The question will still remain how 
we can best help Mexico to realize her 
[ 172 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

own destiny among the nations, to right 
the wrongs under which so many of her 
own people now suffer, to develop her 
undeveloped resources, to educate her 
uneducated masses, and so to enter upon 
the path of national independence and 
self-respect which shall fit her to enter 
on equal terms into the family of the 
nations. 

For the cultivation of such a spirit it 
is our duty as Christians to work. It 
will not prove an easy task. Repentance 
is never easy, whether in a nation or in 
an individual, and repentance we must 
have before improvement is possible. 
When it comes to questions of national 
policy no nation can afford to say to 
another: "I am holier than thou." 

I do not mean to say that there are 
no differences in degrees of guilt. I do 
not mean that in such a world crisis as 
we face to-day there are no immediate 
moral issues between which we must 

[ 173] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

choose. But I do say that when we 
take the long look (and I conceive that 
to be a Christian means to take the long 
look and not the short one, to see the 
things of time in the light of the eternal) 
— I say when we take the long look and 
follow back the present situation to its 
remoter causes, we are led to a story 
of selfish exploitation and conscienceless 
cruelty in which every one of the nations, 
without exception, is to a greater or less 
degree involved. There is not one who 
can say: "I am blameless." To all alike 
the call comes to national repentance 
and national reformation. Whether we 
be Japanese, or English, or Russian, or 
French, or German, or American, each of 
us faces the same choice between two 
alternatives — the policy of national self- 
ishness and the policy of national ser- 
vice. For each the choice will have far- 
reaching consequences, not only for its 
own life but for the life of the world. 

[ 174 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

Another vexed question upon which 
our discussion sheds light is pacifism. 
Here, too, we seem to find ourselves be- 
tween the horns of a dilemma. On the 
one hand is militarism with its demand 
for armaments; on the other is pacifism 
with its denunciation of war. One tells 
us that war is a permanent human neces- 
sity; the other that it is the sin of sins. 

At first sight, indeed, the pacifist posi- 
tion seems peculiarly appealing. It pre- 
sents us a plain question of duty, a sim- 
ple choice between right and wrong. If 
God, as we know, is love, asks the pacifist, 
how can it be right to fight ? Above all, 
how can it be right to kill? Christ, he 
tells us, came to save life, not to destroy, 
and the true Christian will follow him in 
his uncompromising hostility to war in 
every form. Let others do what they 
will, he will not fight. Better suffer evil 
than do it. Better be killed than kill. 
And what is true of the individual, he 

[ 175 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

insists, is true of the state. Better to 
perish as a nation than to survive at 
the cost of the violation of the law of 
love. 

But further analysis shows that the 
problem is not so simple. If love and 
non-resistance were synonyms pacifists 
would be in the right, but it is not clear 
that this is true. To refrain from fight- 
ing when others than myself are con- 
cerned may be the part of selfishness 
rather than of courage. Had Belgium 
not resisted Germany, it might have been 
better for Belgium, but what would have 
been the consequences for France ? This 
is a situation in which the logic of paci- 
fism affords no clear guidance. 

The difficulty of the pacifist position 
becomes still more apparent when we 
consider the case of dependent or sub- 
ject peoples. What shall we say of a 
nation whose rulers deliberately adopt 
a policy of extermination, as Turkey did 

[ 176] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

at the time of the Bulgarian massacres, 
and is doing to-day with the Armenians ? 
What shall we say when Mohammedan 
slave-traders decimate Africa and leave 
the marks of their ruthless progress in 
tracks of blood from sea to sea? Have 
civilized nations no responsibility in such 
a case as this? May force not be used 
to prevent such outrages or render their 
repetition in the future impossible? 

And what of those cases where a great 
principle is at stake, such as was involved 
in our own war of independence, or in 
the struggle for a united Italy? Shall 
we condemn Washington and Mazzini 
as unchristian because when peaceable 
means had been tried in vain they turned 
to the sword as the last resort? Shall 
we say that Lincoln was no Christian 
when he answered the gun fired on Sum- 
ter with his call for volunteers? To do 
this would be to unwrite some of the 
noblest pages of human history and rob 
[ 177 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

our children of examples by which our 
own lives have been inspired. 

No doubt war in itself settles nothing 
finally. It can at most clear the way for 
the spiritual influences to which the future 
belongs, but that it has sometimes done 
this seems plain, and that the same re- 
sult could have been achieved in any 
other way under the conditions which 
then existed is yet to be proved. 

The problem here is of a piece with 
the larger problem which meets us when- 
ever we try to apply an absolute ideal to 
a progressive society. Progress means 
gradual change from the less to the more 
perfect, a change in which each particular 
step is to be judged in its bearing upon 
all the others. In most phases of the 
social problem we recognize this and act 
accordingly. We see that in organized 
society compromise of some sort is in- 
evitable, and adopt that course of action 
which, on the whole, seems to lead us 
[178] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

most surely and most directly to the de- 
sired end. Pacifists accept the princi- 
ple of compromise in other aspects of 
the social life, but in this one particular 
they make an exception. To war, and 
to war alone, they apply the absolute 
standard. They act themselves and ex- 
pect others to act as if the Kingdom of 
God, for which they like other lovers of 
their kind are working, were realized in 
fact. 

I would speak with the greatest re- 
spect of those who take this position. 
Among their ranks are some of the 
bravest and some of the most unselfish 
of men. The taunt that the pacifist is 
a weakling or a coward springs either 
from ignorance or from motives less 
worthy. Courage is no less courage when 
it braves public opinion than when it 
faces bullets. And the world is better 
to-day, and the outlook for the future 
more hopeful because in every country 
[ 179] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

there is a little group which in the name 
of Christ has refused to compromise with 
conscience even though refusal mean per- 
sonal misunderstanding and social ostra- 
cism. 

Nevertheless the fact remains that for 
most Christians the arguments of the 
pacifist have not proved convincing. 
To them the war has come as a clear call 
of duty, and in giving their lives to the 
service of their country they have found 
the satisfaction and peace which are the 
natural results of willing sacrifice to a 
cause beyond self. To discredit such a 
sacrifice or belittle the motive which in- 
spired it is to act unintelligently. Rather 
should we welcome this spirit wherever 
it is found, and see in it a foretaste of 
the greater loyalty which is some day 
to unite all the peoples in the service of 
the Kingdom of God. 

But if we cannot see our way clear to 
accept the pacifist position, it does not 

I 180] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

mean that we are committed to milita- 
rism. Here again there is a third alterna- 
tive possible. A nation may arm in the 
interests of peace. Strong enough itself 
to repel invasion, it may show such fair- 
ness in its international relations and 
such trust in the willingness of other na- 
tions to meet it on the plane of justice 
and reason that the suspicion and fear 
which lead to war may be repelled, and 
the new era of internationalism with 
its accompaniments in disarmament 
and world organization may be ushered 
in. 

The difficulty has been that in the past 
military preparedness has been accompa- 
nied by no correspondingly strong move- 
ment for the peaceful adjustment of dis- 
putes between nations. To arm for 
peace while you maintain unimpaired 
the causes which produce wars is to 
involve yourself in a contradiction in 
terms. There are more ways than one 

[181] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

to wage war, and tariffs and immigration 
acts may be as fruitful a cause of mis- 
understanding between nations as Krupp 
guns and submarines. Unite the two 
and the result is inevitable. National 
armament in the hands of nationalistic 
diplomacy can have but one issue. It 
spells war and only war. 

If then we are to rescue civilization 
from the impasse into which it has been 
brought by the present system of inter- 
national relations we must put a new 
meaning into the concept of prepared- 
ness. We must challenge the right of 
the militarist to claim this great word for 
his own. Those who argue for national 
service are quite in the right, but is there 
no way to serve but to fight? Surely 
he serves his country who removes the 
causes which threaten her peace as truly 
as he who fights for her when the threat 
has become a reality. The teacher who 
interprets to his countrymen the higher 

[ 182 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

aspirations of men of other lands, the 
economist who exposes the fallacy of the 
policy of national exclusion, the lawyer 
who devises the machinery for the peace- 
ful settlement of international disputes, 
the minister who reminds men of their 
common relation to a common father; 
these, too, as well as the soldier and the 
sailor, are national servants, preparing 
their country to meet the dangers to 
which without their help it would be ex- 
posed. The difficulty has been that we 
have thus far left their work so largely to 
their own initiative. We have organized 
our armies and our navies and equipped 
them with all the resources of modern 
science. We have left our professors and 
our publicists and our economists and 
our moralists to deal with their greater 
responsibilities in isolation. We have 
perpetuated in this most important of 
all the aspects of national service the 
methods of guerilla warfare. Is it any 

[ 183] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

wonder that under the strain of the 
world crisis it should break down ? 

What is the explanation of so stupid 
a policy? It is the lack of an adequate 
ideal. In our feeling, whatever may be 
true of our theory, we have not yet 
outgrown the feudal age. The glamour 
of the age of chivalry is with us still, 
and we bring up our children to think of 
war as the true school of heroism and 
soldiers as the ideal patriots. Professor 
James is right. We need a moral equiv- 
alent of war. We need to show that 
there is a cause as splendid as any for 
which the heroes of old have fought, 
demanding virtues as exacting and mak- 
ing appeals to sacrifice as complete as 
any that are being made to-day in the 
mountains of the Tyrol or the battle- 
fields of France. Such a cause Jesus 
gives us in his gospel. He summons us 
to a new crusade for the Kingdom of 
God. It is our part as Christians to give 

[ 184 ] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

form and definiteness to this ideal, to 
make it live before the imagination of 
men; above all, to show its bearing upon 
our own duty as a nation, and the part 
we can take in helping to translate it 
into fact. 

Not less preparedness then but more 
should be the national motto — prepared- 
ness for the tasks that meet us every 
day in the year, preparedness not sim- 
ply or chiefly for the war that may some 
day be possible, but for the peace that 
is inevitable. When once the imagina- 
tion of men has been captured by this 
conception there are no limits to what 
we may hope to achieve. 

Am I giving a counsel of perfection, 
a dream out of place in this world of 
hard fact, the world of Bernhardi and 
Treitschke and Nietzsche? If so it is a 
dream that has been dreamed by others 
who cannot be accused of being senti- 
mentalists. Nietzsche to-day is every- 
[185 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

where lauded as the man without illusions, 
the prophet of the will to conquer, the 
preacher of the glory of strength for 
strength's sake. To Nietzsche then let 
us go. This is what he has to say of the 
present philosophy of preparedness: 

"Perhaps a memorable day will come 
when a nation renowned in wars and 
victories, distinguished by the highest 
development of military order and intel- 
ligence, and accustomed to make the 
heaviest sacrifice to these objects, will 
voluntarily exclaim, 'We will break our 
swords,' and will destroy its whole mili- 
tary system, lock, stock, and barrel. 
Making ourselves defenseless (after hav- 
ing been the most strongly defended) 
from a loftiness of sentiment — that is 
the means toward genuine peace, which 
must always rest upon a pacific disposi- 
tion. The so-called armed peace that 
prevails at present in all countries is a 
sign of a bellicose disposition, of a dis- 
[ 186] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

position that trusts neither itself nor its 
neighbor, and, partly from hate, partly 
from fear, refuses to lay down its weap- 
ons. Better to perish than to hate and 
fear, and twice as far better to perish 
than to make oneself hated and feared. 
This must some day become the supreme 
maxim of every political community." l 
It was Germany's failure to see this 
which explains why she has lost the sym- 
pathy of so many of the thoughtful men 
in the neutral nations. More than for 
what she has done they blame her for 
what she has failed to do. She was 
the country to which educated men the 
world over had been accustomed to turn 
for intellectual leadership. She had car- 
ried the ideal of national unity further 
than any other nation. She had organ- 
ized her resources for the tasks of peace 



1 "Human, all-too-human," Eng. tr., vol. II, p. 337. 
I owe the quotation to Dr. Gladden, "The Forks of 
the Road," pp. 83, 84. 

[ 187] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

with an intelligence and effectiveness un- 
approached by any other people. Of all 
the nations therefore she seemed the best 
fitted to realize the ideal of Nietzsche of 
the nation strong enough to fight who 
yet dared to take risks for peace. 

She did not do it; that is her national 
sin. It is no excuse to say that in this 
she was only following an example which 
had been set by other nations in the 
past. Even if this were true, it would 
not exonerate her. The nation which is 
to lead humanity in its upward march 
cannot be content to be no worse than 
others. It must be actively and aggres- 
sively better. When Germany put aside 
the dream of an international peace, 
based on confidence and justice, and 
staked her all upon the appeal to the 
sword she lost her opportunity of in- 
ternational leadership. 

And what is true of Germany will 
prove true of every other nation which 
[188] 



THE DUTY FOR TO-MORROW 

follows in her footsteps. It will prove 
true of England if England listens to the 
counsels of her own imperialists. It will 
prove true of the United States if we al- 
low ourselves to be swept from our moor- 
ing by those who in matters of national 
policy would bid us take counsel of our 
fears. What will it profit to conquer 
the armies of the enemy in the field if 
the philosophy which armed them re- 
mains unsubdued ? Unless this war bring 
changes, not simply in the outward rela- 
tions, but in the spirit of men, its vast 
sacrifices and unexampled heroism will 
have been spent in vain. 

Is there not here a great opportunity 
for the Japanese people? What the 
world needs to-day, I repeat, is interna- 
tional leadership — the example of a great 
nation, wise enough to read the signs of 
the times and daring enough to follow 
what they see. Before you, as before 
every civilized people, there open two 

[ 189] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

possibilities, and between them you must 
choose. There is on the one hand the 
policy of imperialistic nationalism, with 
its corollary in militarism, and on the 
other the policy of international co-opera- 
tion and brotherhood with preparedness 
indeed, but preparedness which is directed 
to the single end of promoting good feel- 
ing between the nations and so removing 
the preventable causes of war. The first 
promises the more immediate success. 
The second looks to the longer future. 
Which part will you take? You have 
done great things in the past. Are you 
strong enough and brave enough to at- 
tempt still greater? You have proved 
yourselves masters of the art of war. 
Will you be able to show an equal mas- 
tery of the greater and the more difficult, 
and may I add, the more heroic art of 
peace ? 



[ 190 ] 



CHAPTER V 
WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

But after all what one nation can do 
alone even with the best will in the 
world is limited. Between nations as 
between individuals, there must be co- 
operation on a large scale if large results 
are to be obtained. It is one of the en- 
couraging features of the present situa- 
tion that this is being so generally recog- 
nized. From widely different quarters 
we find the conviction expressed that 
the present condition of international 
anarchy must no longer be permitted to 
continue, but that the common interest 
of the different nations in a peace based 
upon justice must find expression in 
some international organization represen- 
tative enough to command confidence, 
and strong enough to enforce respect. 

[191] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

But it is one thing to see what ought 
to be done, and quite another to devise 
means for doing it. Here it must be 
confessed that the outlook is not encour- 
aging. Individuals have been won to 
the ideal of a League of the Nations. 
Societies have been formed to educate 
public sentiment in favor of concerted 
action in matters affecting the peace of 
the world. But there exists to-day no 
organized body able to bring to the cause 
of internationalism a support as effec- 
tive and resources as great as nationalism 
can command within each of the coun- 
tries which it is proposed to unite. 

Did I say that there was no organiza- 
tion? I spoke too hastily. Yes, there 
is one, if only we realized its potentiali- 
ties and were prepared to use them for 
the great ends at stake. This organiza- 
tion is the Christian church. In the 
church we have a body whose member- 
ship includes all classes and all races, 

[ 192 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

which is committed by its very constitu- 
tion to faith in the unity of mankind, 
and which has its representatives in ev- 
ery quarter of the globe. In the church, 
therefore, we have an agency of unri- 
valled power for realizing the Christian 
social ideal. 

But as yet this great instrument has 
never been effectively used. The church 
of Christ, great as have been its services 
to humanity, has never yet fairly faced 
its responsibility for social reconstruc- 
tion. It has confined itself largely to the 
work of saving individuals and in this 
limited sphere has not been able to agree 
as to the method in which this was to be 
done. So we see the lamentable spec- 
tacle of a divided Christendom, impotent 
to realize the unity in which it professes 
to believe. 

We have already considered the rea- 
sons which explain this failure. Some 
of these reasons are historical, growing 
[ 193 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

out of the intellectual environment, and 
for which Christians are only in part 
responsible; our ignorance of the laws 
of social life, for example, the pressing 
importance of meeting the primary needs 
of the individual soul. But the point is 
that we face a new situation to-day, and 
can no longer plead ignorance. We know 
to-day the power of social organization, 
and the greatness of social need. We 
hear the call to united action from men 
who, for lack of our union, are perishing. 

Here is our supreme opportunity as 
Christians — to make the church in fact 
what in theory it professes to be, the 
representative and spokesman of the 
spiritual unity of mankind. 

It will not do to say that it is too late; 
that the church has had its chance and 
failed. That is no more true of the 
church than of every other international 
organization. Socialism, too, has failed, 
and international law. Arbitration has 
[ 194 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

failed, and The Hague court — failed, 
that is to say, for the time being. But 
that does not mean that the failure need 
be permanent. The direction of a mov- 
ing body is determined by the relative 
strength of the different forces which 
play upon it; and because at any par- 
ticular time the forces which favor prog- 
ress have not yet acquired momentum 
enough to overcome the forces which 
oppose it, it does not follow that they 
have no momentum, or that they may 
not at some future time gain the mastery. 
It is not the situation at the present 
moment which will prove finally decisive 
for the future organization of society, 
but the rate at which each of its com- 
ponent elements is increasing or dimin- 
ishing, and that is a matter in which our 
own activity may play a determining 
part. 

What contribution, then, has the 
church to make to the work of social 
[ 195 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

reconstruction? In the equation of so- 
cial progress what particular increment 
of power may it fairly be expected to 
contribute ? 

Three things at least the church can 
do, which need to be done. In the first 
place, it can remind us of the degree of 
unity which we have already attained. 
In the second place, it can furnish us a 
training-school for common action in the 
service of mankind. In the third place, 
it can foster that attitude of expectant 
faith without which great undertakings 
are impossible. 

In the first place the church can re- 
mind us of the degree of unity to which 
we have already attained. This is a 
service of the highest importance. There 
are men and women in every country 
to-day who feel their oneness in purpose 
and sympathy with their fellow Chris- 
tians with whom for the time being, 

[ 196 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

through no fault of their own, they are 
at strife, and who desire nothing better 
than to co-operate with them in resist- 
ing the campaign of bitterness and hate 
which threatens the future of all they 
hold most dear. But they lack the means 
to make their will effective in action. 

Just before the war broke out there 
was held at Constance in Germany a 
conference of Christian ministers to dis- 
cuss international peace. Among those 
present were Englishmen and Americans, 
Dutchmen and Swedes, Frenchmen and 
Germans. They met under the shadow 
of the impending crisis, and men who 
were there have told me that they will 
never forget the solemnity and the ten- 
derness of their communion together dur- 
ing the few brief hours before they were 
obliged to separate. 

There are Christians, I repeat, in every 
country with such an international con- 
sciousness, but their witness is ineffec- 
[ 197] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

tive because it does not reach those for 
whom it is most needed. The channels 
of expression which were open to them 
in peace are closed in war. When Dr. 
Lahusen of Berlin preaches a sermon on 
the necessity of forgiving our enemies, 
of which more than fifty thousand copies 
are sold in Germany, 1 no echo finds its 
way across the sea to England. The 
papers are too full of Lissauer's "Hymn 
of Hate." When Dr. Temple and other 
English Christians unite in the publi- 
cation of "Papers for War Time," 2 in 
which the nobler aspects of Christianity 
find expression, or bow in prayer for the 
brothers across the sea, from whom for 
the time the fortunes of war have sepa- 
rated them, word of it finds its way to 
Germany only through some chance let- 
ter of an American friend, and that 
months afterward. Yet it is through 
such contacts alone that the unity of 

1 Berlin, 1915. 2 Oxford, 1914. 

[198] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

the Christian consciousness can be main- 
tained. One of the most pressing duties 
before the church is to devise some 
method by which this difficulty can be 
overcome, and freedom of communica- 
tion secured between the different bodies 
of Christians in time of war. 

Let us suppose that when the German 
Christians published their open letter at 
the beginning of the war, in which they 
passionately protested their country's 
innocence of any aggressive intention, 
and put the blame for what had hap- 
pened upon their opponents, their fellow 
Christians in England, instead of enter- 
ing into the issues immediately in con- 
troversy, should have addressed them 
in some such fashion as this: "We un- 
derstand and respect the spirit of patri- 
otism which impels you to spring to 
the defense of your country in her hour 
of crisis; we feel a like impulse and 
acknowledge a similar duty. What you 

[199] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

believe about Germany we believe about 
England, and if this were the proper 
time and place we could argue our coun- 
try's cause with a conviction no less sin- 
cere than yours, and with arguments 
which we believe to be better founded. 
But this has been done by others, and to 
their statement we are content to refer 
you. We who are servants of Christ 
have other interests to guard and owe 
a higher allegiance. While this great 
issue is being fought out, and until the 
verdict of history on the immediate points 
in controversy shall be finally rendered, 
it is our duty to guard the spiritual in- 
terests of mankind; to maintain unbroken 
the continuity of the Christian conscious- 
ness; to resist the attempts of men of ill 
will on both sides to add to our just 
causes of quarrel the bitterness of un- 
just suspicion and malicious falsehood; 
to serve as the organ through which the 
spirit of faith and hope and love, which 

[ 200 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

we are sure is present with you as we 
know it is with us, may find effective ex- 
pression in action. 

"Will you not join us in the attempt 
to fulfil this duty effectively? Let us 
appoint representatives of the Christian 
bodies on both sides of the contest. Let 
us request from our governments the 
privilege of free communication between 
the two. Let us refer to them each story 
of cruelty and oppression on either side 
for impartial investigation, and so far as 
possible for correction or redress. Above 
all, let these representatives see to it 
that every utterance of the Christian 
spirit, every instance of generous deed 
or unselfish thought in each country at 
war is brought to the notice of the citi- 
zens of the others. Do not let us leave to 
neutrals in time of war the duty of medi- 
ating between Christians. Let us claim 
our right as fellow members of the body 
of Christ to direct access to one another." 
[ 201 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

Such an appeal, whether successful or 
not, would have had a moral value diffi- 
cult to overestimate. Its tones would 
have echoed around the world. It would 
have set a standard for the church of the 
future. 

But what the churches as a whole are 
not yet ready to do, groups of Christians 
are already doing. There are agencies 
actively at work to-day in which the 
internationalism implicit in Christianity 
finds clear and self-conscious expression. 
One such agency is the Peace Movement; 
another is the Student Movement. Most 
far-reaching in its effect is the Foreign 
Missionary enterprise. It is one of the 
grounds of encouragement in the present 
situation that the bonds which united 
the workers in these different causes, 
while strained, have not been broken by 
the war. Interchanges of sentiment have 
taken place between their leaders. Pray- 
ers have been offered for the comrades in 
[ 202 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

the countries at war. Even now plans 
are being actively discussed for the re- 
sumption of the common task as soon as 
the war is over. 1 

It is difficult to exaggerate the impor- 
tance of this service. We have spoken 
repeatedly of selfishness as a cause of 
war. But after all this is only part of 
the explanation and not the most serious. 
Nations fight not only because of what 
they suffer, or of what they covet, but be- 
cause of what they fear. Russia had not 
attacked Germany, but Germany tells us 
that she is fighting because Russia was 
going to attack her by and by. France 



1 A brief account of conferences conducted by Pro- 
fessor Battin, on behalf of the League of International 
Friendship, with representative Christians in the differ- 
ent countries at war, appeared in the Christian Work 
for August 5, 1916. Of unusual interest was the ex- 
perience of Dr. Mott, who visited Europe in the in- 
terests of the Student Movement in 1914, and again 
in 1916. Many individual instances of international 
good feeling have been collected in Good-Will, the or- 
gan of the English Friends. Cf. also the files of Die 
Eiche, the organ of the German Peace Movement. 

[ 203 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

had not invaded Belgium, but Germany 
insists that she invaded Belgium because 
she knew that France was going to do so 
by and by. And so it goes in a circle 
that knows no end. Selfishness breeds 
suspicion, and suspicion fear. The un- 
derlying cause of war is not merely 
men's memory of the wrongs which they 
have experienced in the past. It is the 
dogma which makes the past the mea- 
sure of the future, and refuses to believe 
in the possibility of any change for the 
better in the relations between nations. 
It is the denial not simply in fact but 
in theory of the cardinal Christian prin- 
ciple of the brotherhood of man. 

Now the only way to meet such an 
issue successfully is to bring evidence to 
the contrary. We must call attention 
to the numbers of men and women in all 
countries who do in fact love justice and 
follow mercy, and who, if they were but 
convinced of the existence of similar sen- 

[ 204 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

timents in the citizens of other countries, 
would be glad to co-operate with them 
in a policy of international friendliness. 
We must resist at all hazards the temp- 
tation to attribute all virtue to oneself, 
and all vice to one's opponents, and re- 
alize that in spite of all outward differ- 
ences, in its deepest longings and desires 
the human race is fundamentally one. 

Who is in a better position to furnish 
this evidence than the Christian church? 
To Christians human brotherhood is not 
an unproved thing. It is a fact that has 
been demonstrated over and over again 
by evidence of the most convincing char- 
acter. For generations the church has 
been putting to the proof its faith in the 
power of the gospel to transcend differ- 
ences of race and of class, and it has 
found it justified. 

On June 7, 1916, there was held in 
Constantinople the commencement exer- 
cises of a women's college. The gradu- 

[ 205 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

ating class numbered seventeen in all: 
three were Turks, seven were Bulgarians, 
three were Greeks, five were Armenians, 
and one a Jewess. For years the peo- 
ples to whom these graduates belonged 
had been enemies, and more than once 
had engaged in deadly and internecine 
strife. The Greeks had fought with the 
Bulgarians, and the Bulgarians with the 
Turks, and for the Armenians the very 
word Turk was a synonym for all that 
was most inhuman and damnable. Yet 
here in the very storm centre of the 
world's strife, with war raging all about 
them, and no one knowing what a day 
might bring forth, they met on common 
ground as members of the sisterhood of 
educated women. 

This is what Christianity is doing to- 
day, and what it proposes to do. It is 
facing the race prejudice which is so 
formidable an obstacle to peace among 
the nations, and proving that it is not 
[ 206 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

insuperable. It is furnishing a solid 
basis in experience for our faith in the 
brotherhood of man. 

When the war broke out fear was ex- 
pressed of the adverse influence which 
the European strife might exert upon 
Christian missions. If even to us at 
home the war has proved a challenge to 
faith, should we not expect it to prove 
a blow still more severe to those less 
mature Christians whose acquaintance 
with Christianity was so much more 
recent ? 

This fear has not been justified by the 
event. The war has shaken faith indeed, 
but not in Christianity. It has shaken 
faith in the profession of the Western 
nations to be Christian nations. To 
those of us who have been brought up 
from childhood in Europe or America, 
the identification of Western civilization 
with Christianity may be a natural thing. 
To the Christians of China and Japan, 
[ 207 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

to whom Christianity has come in its 
native guise of unselfish service and sac- 
rificial love, no such confusion is pos- 
sible. They see clearly that it is not 
Christianity which has failed, but a civili- 
zation which falsely calls itself Christian. 
More powerful than any apologetic of the 
schools is the demonstration of the break- 
down of a purely material civilization. 

Against this lurid background the 
beauty of the Christian spirit shines with 
a purer radiance. Where strife is fiercest 
we see love reaching across the barriers 
which war has raised. The incident of 
the English and German soldiers who 
left the trenches to fraternize together 
on Christmas Day has its parallel in 
many others less well known. From the 
letter of a young English officer in Bel- 
gium I quote these words: 

The other night four German snipers were 
shot on our wire. The next night our men 
went out and brought one in who was near 

[ 208 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

and get-at-able, and buried him. They did 
it with just the same reverence and sadness 
as they do to our own dear fellows. I went 
to look at the grave the next morning, and 
one of the most uncouth-looking men in 
my company had placed a cross at the head 
of the grave, and had written on it: 

"Here lies a German 
We don't know his name; 
He died bravely fighting 
For his Fatherland." 

And under that, "Gott Mitt uns" (sic), that 
being the highest effort of all the men at 
German. 

A French soldier, wounded in a recent 
attack on the German trenches, related 
the following incident: "Near me," 
he says, "lay two soldiers, mortally 
wounded; one, a Bavarian, young and 
fair-haired, with a gaping wound in 
his stomach, and the other a young 
Frenchman, hit in the side and head. 
Both were in mortal pain, and growing 
paler and paler. I saw a feeble move- 

[ 209 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

ment on the part of the Frenchman; 
he painfully slipped his hand under his 
coat for something hidden away under 
his breast. He drew out a little silver 
crucifix, which he pressed to his lips. 
Feebly, but clearly, he began: 'Hail, 
Mary, full of grace.' The Bavarian 
opened his blue eyes, which were al- 
ready glazing with approaching death, 
turned his head toward the Frenchman, 
and with a look, not of hate but almost 
of love, finished in a murmur the prayer, 
'Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us 
sinners now and at the hour of death.' 
The eyes of the two men met, and they 
understood. They were two companions 
in like misfortune, desiring to die believ- 
ing according to their faith. The French- 
man held out his crucifix to the other, 
who kissed it, and taking him by the 
hand said: 'Having served our countries, 
let us go to God reconciled.' "* 

1 Christian Work, July 22, 1916. 
[ 210 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

Such stories could be multiplied a thou- 
sandfold. Underneath the strife and pas- 
sion we detect a great hunger for some- 
thing different, a longing too deep for 
words for some new and better form of 
life, waiting only for the appropriate oc- 
casion to crystallize into action. 

It is for the church to give voice to 
this longing, to assemble the evidence 
from all races of mankind which witnesses 
to the gain already made in the struggle 
for spiritual ideals and holds out promise 
of ultimate victory. 

This does not mean that we are to 
idealize humanity or shut our eyes to 
the ignorance and weakness which play 
so large a role in human affairs. It does 
not mean that we are to condone wrong- 
doing, or fail to protest against it when- 
ever we see it. On the contrary, as we 
have seen, the effect of Christianity 
should be to intensify the conscious- 
ness of sin and to sharpen the judg- 
[211 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

ment passed upon selfishness and cruelty, 
whether in ourselves or others. But it 
does mean that the judgment which we 
pass must be Christian judgment. We 
must judge others as we should wish to 
be judged ourselves if we had done the 
things which we condemn in them. We 
remember that we ourselves have done 
wrong and repented, and we hope that 
our sin has been forgiven. We dare not 
deny to others what we claim for our- 
selves. We must believe, however hard 
at the time it may be to do so, that in 
its heart of hearts each people of man- 
kind wants to do what is right when it 
sees what right is, and that in each the 
forces of good-will will in the end prove 
stronger than the forces for evil. In 
spite of all discouragement and temporary 
failure we must hold fast to our faith 
that the splendid qualities which have 
gone into the building of each of the na- 
tions at strife have not exhausted them- 

[ 212 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

selves in this immediate task, but have 
their part to play in the building of that 
larger citizenship which we call the King- 
dom of God. 

When the returning pilgrims from the 
Peace Conference at Constance met the 
German officers who had been commis- 
sioned by the Kaiser to conduct them 
to the frontier, the officers could not re- 
strain their laughter when they learned 
the business that had brought the trav- 
ellers to Germany. But he laughs best 
who laughs last. Man is not simply 
German or English or Belgian, but 
human, born of woman, child of God, 
brother of Jesus Christ, and war may 
teach this lesson no less than peace. It 
is teaching it to-day. In many a hos- 
pital, on many a battle-field, the love of 
kind overleaps the boundaries of race, 
and the ministry of Christ makes akin 
those who but now were locked in the 
death-struggle. Some day this loving 
[ 213 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

service will bear its fruit, and the "con- 
flict of ideals" be resolved in the " har- 
mony of sacrifice." 

But after all what can be done by the 
church in time of war is limited at best. 
The true concern of Christianity as we 
have seen is with the causes which pro- 
duce war, and these can be dealt with 
successfully only in time of peace. It is 
not enough to recognize the ties which 
already unite men. We must increase 
their number and strengthen their hold- 
ing power, and this can only be done by 
providing some common object definite 
enough to arouse interest and appealing 
enough to command loyalty. 

Here again the church holds a stra- 
tegic position, for in work for the up- 
building of the Kingdom of God it 
possesses such a unifying object. The 
church is not simply a body of wor- 
shippers conscious of a common relation 

[ 214 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

to God. It is a missionary society com- 
mitted to a world programme. It exists 
to make the world over after the ideal 
which Christ has revealed. It is a train- 
ing-school for common action in the ser- 
vice of humanity. 

It is difficult to exaggerate the im- 
portance of this contribution. One of 
the saddest of all the effects of the war is 
the division which it has caused among 
Christians. We have already called at- 
tention to this. Men who claim to wor- 
ship the same God are righting on op- 
posite sides, and each prays to the same 
Deity for victory over the other. 

In part, no doubt, this is due to honest 
misunderstanding. Men do not know 
the real spirit of their opponents, and 
because of this misconception are led 
astray. 

But this is true only in part. When 
one studies the utterances which the war 
has called forth, one is led to the conclu- 

[215] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

sion, reluctantly to be sure, but still in- 
evitably, that there is a real difference 
in the God worshipped. Under the name 
of Christ many so-called Christians are 
really worshipping a very different Deity. 

During the early months of the war I 
read an article by a distinguished the- 
ologian on the ethics of war. In this 
article he laid down the principle that 
war was God's way of re-establishing the 
balance between the real power of a 
nation at a particular time, and its po- 
litical power; and since this was true, 
it was manifestly the duty of the con- 
queror in any war to keep all he could 
get, since only under such conditions 
could God's purpose be accomplished. 

This article happened to be written 
by a German, but the philosophy which 
it inculcates is not confined to any coun- 
try. It has its advocates in all. When 
men deny that the principles of Christ 
are valid for nations, when they turn to 

[ 216 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

force as the final arbiter in international 
disputes, they are really taking refuge in 
a pre-Christian religion. They are wor- 
shipping Thor or Odin under the name 
of Christ. 

We have already dealt with the prob- 
lem which this fact raises for faith. It 
is a part of the larger problem of social 
progress. History, as we have seen, does 
not move in a straight line. It has its 
eddies and its backwaters, its failures 
and its retrogressions. God has been 
training man for Christianity through a 
long historic process, leading him up 
step by step from the beast to the man, 
from the old man in Adam to the new 
man in Christ, and the traces of the 
earlier stages still survive. 

We can follow the steps of this educa- 
tion in the Bible. Before Christ came 
there were generations when men thought 
of God in terms of power rather than of 
love. Jehovah was the God of hosts, 

[ 217 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

the Lord of the armies of Israel. He 
called upon Joshua to exterminate the 
inhabitants of Ai and rebuked Saul for 
saving Agag alive. Only gradually was 
the lesson learned that God desires re- 
pentance rather than vengeance, and 
that he saves by sacrificial love. 

It is not strange then that men to-day 
should grasp at the less advanced pas- 
sages in the Old Testament as an excuse 
for their own selfishness or lack of faith, 
and invoke Christ to bless the very thing 
that he came to destroy. The thing has 
occurred again and again in history. We 
meet it in Puritanism with its exalta- 
tion of Old Testament ethics to the level 
of the New. We meet it in the Inquisi- 
tion with its attempt to substitute force 
for persuasion in dealing with questions 
of personal conviction. We meet it in 
the claim of the militant Popes to an 
absolute and unquestioning obedience. 
Imperialism is not simply a philosophy; 

[ 218 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

it is a religion, and one of the oldest. 
And imperialism is not less imperialism 
when it borrows Christian garments and 
masquerades under the name of Christ. 

How shall we meet this situation? 
What influence can we command power- 
ful enough to exorcise this evil spirit? 
There is only one influence strong enough, 
and that is the Spirit of Christ. The 
only weapon with which to fight an ideal 
is a higher ideal; the only way to con- 
quer a loyalty is by a stronger loyalty. 

Our supreme need, then, is of a virile 
gospel. It is not enough to promise 
comfort; not enough to preach salvation. 
War's appeal is to the strong. Its com- 
pensation is spiritual — glory or honor, 
or the consciousness of duty done, or 
the thanks of a grateful country. If we 
are to win men from such a service we 
must offer similar rewards, greater glory, 
truer honor, a higher duty, the gratitude 
of mankind. Safety first may be a good 
[ 219 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

motto for a railroad or a savings-bank; 
it will not do for a country, still less for 
a church. The religion that is to con- 
quer the world must be a fighting re- 
ligion. It must write on its banner New 
Wars for Old. 

Such a motto foreign missions offer 
the church. Missions are religion's invi- 
tation to the spirit of adventure. They 
show us Christianity in its fighting mood, 
the church organized for conquest. In 
missions we see the effort to realize the 
unity of mankind by the free sharing of 
each with all of the highest blessings of 
the spirit. We see love going out into 
all the world to heal and to serve. But 
we see more than this. We see love 
appealing to the free spirit to become 
its own true self; to break the bonds of 
ignorance and sloth and indifference and 
unbelief with which it has too long been 
shackled, and to join the ranks of the 
healers and the sharers. 

[ 220 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

This definition puts foreign missions in 
their true perspective. They are not an 
isolated thing, a task to which a man may 
give himself for its own sake, without 
reference to or regard for other human 
interests. They are a part — the most 
important and significant part — of that 
modern social movement which is so 
characteristic a feature of our age. They 
are the way the Christian spirit responds 
to the Master's summons to refashion 
the social order after the pattern which 
he has set. In them human brother- 
hood translates itself from faith into fact. 

In a recent address upon the American 
spirit 1 Mr. Lane, the Secretary of the 
Interior, thus interprets the peace-loving 
spirit of the American people: "The 
spirit of America is against war not be- 
cause we have grown cowardly and fear 
death, nor because we have grown flabby 
and love softness; no, not even because 

1 The Survey, July 15, 1916. 
[ 221 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

we have become conscious converts to 
the Prince of Peace. But we in America 
have something larger to do. We are 
discovering our country. Every tree is 
a challenge to us, and every pool of 
water and every foot of soil. The moun- 
tains are our enemies. We must pierce 
them and make them serve. The wilful 
rivers we must curb ; and out of the seas 
and the air renew the life of the earth 
itself. We have no time for war. We 
are doing something so much more im- 
portant. We are at work. That is the 
greatest of all adventures." 

It is a true interpretation of the la- 
tent idealism in the American character. 
Business to the American is not simply 
making money; it is conquering diffi- 
culties; it is measuring one's strength 
against obstacles; it is making some- 
thing where there was nothing before; 
it is refashioning the world after the pat- 
tern of an ideal. 

[ 222 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

But there are ideals and ideals. If it 
is a big thing to subdue nature, it is a 
bigger to conquer spirit. If it be a man's 
work to transform the physical universe, 
it is no less a man's work to make over 
society. But it is this and nothing less 
for which foreign missions stand. 

There was a time, as we have seen, 
when the missionary enterprise exhausted 
itself in its appeal to the individual: To 
win a convert here and there from other 
religions; to organize them into little 
groups; to draw hard and fast the lines 
which separated the Christian community 
from its heathen environment — this was 
the missionary's work. 

But these days have long passed. 
Foreign missions have entered upon a 
new phase. The appeal to the individual 
is no less important than it was before, 
but we see the individual in a new set- 
ting. He is a member of a community 
that we wish to transform. He is the 
[ 223 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

citizen of a nation that we wish to win. 
It is not Chinese simply that we are 
trying to Christianize, but China; not 
Indians, but India; not Japanese, but 
Japan; not Americans, but America. To 
men with such an aim there is nothing 
foreign. Everything human has interest 
for us since everything human bears di- 
rectly upon our task. Education, indus- 
try, commerce, statesmanship, whatever 
concerns the relation of man to man, or 
of state to state, comes within the pur- 
view of the missionary, is relevant to the 
task to which he has set his hand. The 
great missionaries have not been simply 
preachers; they have been statesmen and 
diplomats. Martin gave China its in- 
ternational law; Washburn was the lead- 
ing authority on the Turkish question, 
the trusted friend and counsellor of the 
diplomats of Europe; DeForest inter- 
preted to the citizens of other countries 
the better spirit of Japan. 

[ 224 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

Is not this a man's work? Consider 
the obstacles to be overcome. There is 
selfishness, that oldest and most primi- 
tive of human impulses, the impulse to 
take all one can get and to keep all one 
has got. We must make this our servant 
by releasing that larger self which is latent 
in every man. We must make men see 
that what Christ wishes is not slaves 
but co-workers, and that the task which 
we offer men in the upbuilding of his 
Kingdom is one in which each man's tru- 
est self will find its deepest satisfaction. 

There is habit, the inertia of the mind 
which is content with things as they are, 
and resists any attempt at improvement. 
If China appeals to the business man as 
a field for profitable investment because 
of the vastness of its undeveloped re- 
sources, how much more to the Chris- 
tian ! What human resources there are 
here waiting to be turned to profitable 
uses ! What kindliness, docility, patience, 
[ 225 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

fortitude, loyalty, if only we could liber- 
ate their possessors from the ignorance 
which now fetters them and open to 
them the larger opportunities in which 
we ourselves have found our freedom. 

There is prejudice, the natural disposi- 
tion in each country to think its own 
civilization the best and to look with 
suspicion upon influences coming from 
without. What infinite tact is necessary 
to deal with such an attitude, what clear 
discrimination between the things which 
are transient and temporary and the 
things which are eternal ! 

There is a form of missionary activity 
more common in the past than to-day, 
which awakens just resentment. When 
one comes to another country with an 
assumption of superiority, and tries to 
impose upon men of an alien civilization 
customs and ideals with which their own 
history affords no point of contact, it is 
not strange that resistance should be en- 

[ 226 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

countered. It is one of the salutary by- 
products of the war that it will make it 
easier for us to resist this temptation in 
the future. We realize to-day what we 
ought to have known before, that there 
is no such thing yet as a Christian nation. 
There are nations which have enjoyed 
the benefits of the gospel longer than 
others, nations which have been longer 
under the tutelage of Christ and in 
which more individuals have benefited 
by his instruction; but there is no single 
nation which is not still missionary ter- 
ritory, not one in which the task which 
the foreign missionary faces in India or 
in Siam, is not equally faced by the Chris- 
tian minister at home. The distinction 
between home and foreign is a purely 
arbitrary distinction. It is a matter of 
the atlas and of the missionary report. 
There is but one kind of missions, and 
that is Christian missions. There is but 
one field, and that is the world. 
[ 227 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

It is only when we interpret the mis- 
sionary enterprise in this large way that 
we can measure its far-reaching signifi- 
cance. It is not the concern of one nation 
only but of all the nations. It is not the 
concern of the church only, but of all 
who love their kind. The day of small 
enterprises has passed never to return. 
Only organization can meet organization; 
only by working together for the cause 
of humanity in time of peace can we forge 
the bonds of sympathy and of confidence 
that will keep us one when the strain of 
war comes. 

In this inspiring task of co-operation 
and reconstruction, you of the Japanese 
church may have an honorable part to 
play. It is in your power to assist in 
this reorganization of the Christian forces 
by giving an example within your own 
country of an effective and undivided 
Christianity. We who inherit the tradi- 
tions of the Western world are hampered 
in our attempts to come together by many 
[ 228 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

obstacles to which you are strangers. 
Here on this new soil where Christianity- 
is still comparatively young, it should 
be possible for you to unite all Chris- 
tians in the consciousness of a common 
opportunity and a common responsibility, 
and give your fellow Christians who are 
still divided the example of a united na- 
tional church. 

And here again we must begin at home. 
If Christians cannot come together in 
Tokyo to express their common brother- 
hood in Christ, how can we expect them 
to do so in Japan as a whole? If they 
cannot do so in Japan how can they do 
so in the world? The task of Christian 
co-operation, important enough surely 
from the point of view of the local com- 
munity, acquires a commanding impor- 
tance when contemplated from the point 
of view of the world. 

And so we come back to the place at 
which we began, the responsibility which 
[ 229 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

rests upon us as individuals to create the 
spiritual atmosphere which will make 
possible these great results. Unless we 
are the men we ought to be we shall never 
have the church we need, or the world 
for which we long. 

How shall we meet this responsibility ? 
Whence shall we gain the reinforcement 
of power we need? There is but one 
source which is adequate to the demand, 
and that is God. 

I have spoken of the resources at our 
disposal for the great tasks which lie 
ahead; the capacity which the war has 
revealed in human nature for heroic loy- 
alty and self -forgetting sacrifice; the 
longing for some better world order than 
the present system of rivalry and strife; 
but after all the most important fact in 
the case still remains to be catalogued, 
and that is the living God Himself. We 
are not obliged to work out the world's 
salvation alone. If that were the case 
[ 230 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

we might well despair. God, who has 
created in us these capacities, and put 
into our hearts these longings, is Himself 
actively at work in the world to accom- 
plish His plan. 

Greatest of all Christianity's contri- 
butions to social progress is faith in the 
living God. There is nothing in the 
ideal of human brotherhood as such in 
which Christians can claim exclusive 
proprietorship. It is shared by all who 
believe in internationalism in any form. 
Whoever is restive under the present con- 
dition of organized selfishness, miscalled 
civilization; whoever recognizes a true 
community of interest with men in other 
countries who share with him the as- 
pirations of a higher and more generous 
life; whoever refuses to accept the ideals 
of nationalism and of imperialism as the 
final word for humanity and in spite of 
present discouragements still hopes for 
the reorganization of society along lines 
[ 231 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

expressive of the common interest, what- 
ever form that reorganization may take; 
whoever, in short, regards mankind as 
greater than any of its parts and con- 
secrates his life to its service, faces in 
principle the same issue which confronts 
Christians to-day. 

It is one of the compensations of the 
present situation that it has shown us 
how many such people there are. Chris- 
tians of all nations honor the courage 
of that minority of Socialists who have 
dared to plead the cause of humanity 
under the most imperialistic of all the 
warring governments, and they in turn 
when they wish to drive home their pro- 
test in the most convincing way borrow 
language from the religion which they 
had formerly repudiated. We had not 
thought of Vorwdrts as a Christian or- 
gan, but these are the words which it 
addressed to the German Government 
in the momentous days when peace and 

[ 232 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

war still hung in the balance: "Let us 
understand, then, that we are not merely 
Germans, French, or Russians, but that 
we are all men, that all the peoples are 
of the same blood, and that they have 
no right to kill one another, but that they 
ought to love and help one another. 
Such is Christianity, humane conduct. 
Man does not belong to one nation only: 
he belongs to humanity." 1 

But while in its main lines the issue is 
the same for all, it comes home to Chris- 
tians with peculiar force because of their 
religious interpretation of life. To us 
regard for other men is not simply a mat- 
ter of human instinct, still less of prac- 
tical expediency, but of religious faith. 
Human brotherhood is the corollary of 
divine sonship, and the task of organiz- 
ing the world according to the principles 

1 This editorial, which was suppressed by the Ger- 
man Government, was privately circulated and is re- 
printed in The Survey of August 21, 1915. 

[ 233 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

of mutual helpfulness and unselfish ser- 
vice follows necessarily from the initial 
act of redemptive love, on which the in- 
dividual bases his hope of personal sal- 
vation. 

It is here, I repeat, in this faith in 
the Father God that we reach the su- 
preme contribution of Christianity to 
the cause of social reconstruction. We 
are all facing a common task, but we 
differ in our estimate of the resources at 
our disposal. Where some see only the 
human factors in the case, our faith dis- 
cerns God at work, and on His inexhaus- 
tible stores of wisdom and power we base 
our hope of final victory. 

For it is faith, after all, on which all 
turns, faith in the power of spirit to lift 
itself above the flesh, of light to dispel 
darkness, of love to conquer selfishness, 
of the future to emancipate itself from 
the shackles of the past. Where such 
faith exists all things are possible. With- 
[ 234 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

out it the will falters and effort flags. 
Where there is no vision the people perish. 
Our primary business as Christians 
then must be to keep alive the God con- 
sciousness in man. We have seen how 
this consciousness revives in time of 
crisis, but why need we wait for crisis to 
discover God? God is as near and as 
accessible in peace as in war if we have 
only eyes to see Him. It is for the 
church to furnish this vision. Greatest 
of all its tasks and most weighty of its 
responsibilities is its function as a school 
of faith. It must keep ever before our 
eyes the struggle for righteousness in 
which we are always engaged. It must 
remind us of the summons to service that 
is forever sounding in our ears. It must 
retell to the rising generations the story 
of the triumphs which have already been 
won by those who have put their trust 
in God and dared to take risks in His 
service. In a word, it must foster that 

[ 235 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

attitude of expectancy which shall make 
no enterprise seem too daring, no under- 
taking too great. 

For whom should this attitude be 
easier than for us modern Christians? 
We are not facing unfamiliar problems 
like those pioneers of faith who had to 
venture out into the dark with no ex- 
perience to guide them. We are the 
latest in a long line of experimenters who 
have put Christ's promises to the proof 
and found their faith justified by the 
event. As we look back over the course 
of history we see days that looked to 
those who lived through them as dark 
as these through which we are passing 
now, but we see also the light of the 
new day that dawned after the clouds 
had rolled away. We remember Calvary 
with its dark shadow, but we remember 
Easter, too, and we thank God and take 
courage. 

I have come recently from Panama, 

[ 236 ] 



WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO 

where it was my privilege to study the 
great Canal which represents, I suppose, 
the supreme limit of man's achievement 
in the struggle against nature. One's 
thought goes back to those early days 
when the French engineers began their 
work. We wonder at the faith which 
made them believe then that their plan 
was possible in the face of all the doubters 
who declared that it was impossible. 
But we do not fully learn the lesson of 
their faith until we realize that with the 
data then at their command the doubters 
were right. If there were no resources 
available but those De Lesseps possessed 
when he began to dig, the task was im- 
possible. And yet the canal has been 
dug. Why? Because there were un- 
discovered resources still uncatalogued. 
In his arsenal of nature God holds in re- 
serve new powers which are only gradu- 
ally released, as science discovers one by 
one the keys which unlock the closed 

[ 237 ] 



IS CHRISTIANITY PRACTICABLE? 

doors. And it is these new powers, an- 
ticipated by faith before science can gain 
access to them, to which the future be- 
longs. 

It is so in our task of spiritual recon- 
struction. In religion as in science the 
present can never be the measure of the 
future. If we were shut up to the re- 
sources which we now possess we should 
fail. But God has other workers still to 
enlist, and new powers still to release, 
and these in time — if we but do our part 
— will make accomplishment certain, and 
usher in the new social order for which 
the world still waits. 



[ 238 ] 



INDEX 



Absolute ideal, 178. 

Adam, 217. 

Africa, 177. 

Agag, 218. 

Ai, 218. 

Almsgiving, 162. 

America, 166, 207, 221, 224. 

American character, idealism 

of, 222. 
Amos, 63. 
Apologetic, 208. 
Arbitration, 154, 156. 194. 

application of, in labor dis- 
putes, 154. 
Armenians, 177. 
Assyria, 55, 102, 103. 
Assyrians, 66. 
Augustine, 37. 

Confessions of, 37. 
Australia, 165. 
Austria, 6, 60, 132. 

Battin, Professor, 203. 
Belgium, 60, 103, 104, 176, 
204, 208. 
compensation to, 79, 80. 
Bernhardi, 57, 185. 
Bible, 27, 61, 66, 69, 217. 
Boston Evening Transcript, 

116. 
Brotherhood of man, 19, 45, 
46, 81, 204, 205. 
contribution of Christian- 
ity to, 206. 
Bulgarian massacres, 177. 



Calvary, 73, 236. 

Canaan, 55. 

Canada, 98, 165. 

Cavour, 143. 

Chancellor of Germany, 

119. 
Charity, 160, 161, 162. 
China, 151, 168, 207, 224. 
Japanese attitude toward, 
168-170. 
Christ, 21, 25, 74, 76, 77, 106, 
113, 142, 175, 213, 219, 
227. 
second coming of, 25. 
incarnation of, 74. 
cross, typical character of, 

77. 
Spirit of, 219. 
Christ in Flanders, 86. 
Christian faith, 3. 
conscience, 4. 
attitude toward war, 5. 
religion, a record of growth, 

33. 
claim, tests of, 49. 
ideal, 51. 
method, practicability of, 

122. 
unity, 229. 
Christian Work, 203, 210. 
Christianity, individualistic 
conception of, 4. 
practicability of, two senses 
of the question, 12; 
from the point of view 



[ 239 ] 



INDEX 



of the individual, 13; 
of society 11-22, 38. 
principles which deter- 
mine, 34-47. 
attempts to evade issue, 
24-29. 
premillenarian at- 
tempt, 24 sq. 
mystic attempt, 28 sq. 
social interpretation of, 16, 

42. 
chief tenets of, 17, 18. 
internationalism of, 19. 
organized, 22. 
as a religion of individual 

salvation, 24, 32. 
a militant religion, 36. 
place of struggle in, 37. 
influence of, upon charac- 
ter, 37. 
outside the church, 40. 
spirit of, 40. 
not to be measured by 
its institutions, 40. 
alternatives to, 42, 44. 
not an ascetic religion, 62. 
Christmas, 208. 
Christmas letter of English 

women, 132. 
Church, failure of, 3. 
lack of definite construc- 
tive programme, 5, 7, 
40, 41, 77. 
abnegation of leadership of, 

by, 22, 41. 
as an institution, 106. 
what it can do, 191 sq. 
international character of, 

192. 
opportunity of, 193. 



failure of, in the past, 193. 
reasons for this, 193, 194. 
function of, as a reminder of 
unity already attained, 
196 sq. 
a missionary society, 214, 

215. 
function of, to foster faith 
in God, 235. 
Compromise, place of, in re- 
ligion, 38, 39, 178. 
acceptance of, by pacifists, 
179. 
Concert of Europe, 52. 
Conference of faith and or- 
der, 4. 
Congress, 161. 
Constance, 197, 213. 

Peace Conference at, 197. 
Constantinople, 205. 
Conversion, 142. 
Cramb, 127. 

Crisis, magnitude of present, 
23. 
significance of, as test and 
teacher, 33. 
Cross, 73. 
importance of, for Christi- 
anity, 73. 
isolation of, from other hu- 
man experience, 74. 
social meaning of, 74. 
divine significance of, 83. 
the revelation of God's 
heart, 83. 



DeForest, 224. 
De Lesseps, 237. 
Dependent peoples, 167. 



[ 240 ] 



INDEX 



Diagnosis, Christian, of pres- 
ent situation, 49 sq. 

Diplomacy, 43, 50. 
philosophy of present, 43. 

Duty for to-morrow, 141 sq. 

East, peoples of, 43. 
Easter, 236. 

Edinburgh Conference, 4. 
Education, 145. 

for humanity, 37, 131. 

use of, in the interests of 
war, 125, 126. 
Egypt, 55, 56, 102, 103. 
Eiche, Die, 203. 
Employers, 155. 
England, 6, 29, 104, 120, 129, 

165, 189. 
English White Book, 52. 
Environment, 147. 
Europe, 29, 207. 

history of, 51. 
European countries 50, 51, 

52. 
Evangelists, great, method of, 

92. 
Exploitation, 168, 169, 174. 
Ezekiel, 70. 

Faith, its nature and validity, 
3. 
reinforcement of, wrought 

by the war, 84. 
in God revived in time of 

trouble, 88. 
in God based upon experi- 
ence rather than logic, 



function of, 112, 123. 



Fatherhood of God, 18, 19, 

234. 
Feeling, function of, in so- 
ciety, 165. 
Florence Nightingale, 143. 
Foreign missionary ente-- 

prise, 202. 
Foreign missions, 220. 
true significance of, 221. 
social significance of, 223. 
contrast between older and 
newer ideals, 223, 224. 
obstacles to, 225 sq. 
Forgiveness of sins, 21, 79. 
France, 52, 58, 60, 78, 165, 

176, 184, 203, 204. 
Francis of Assisi, 143. 
French priests, 85. 
Friends, English, 203. 

Garibaldi, 143. 
German chancellor, 119. 
German peace movement, 

203. 
Germany, 6, 52, 78, 85, 98, 
104, 116, 132, 176, 187, 
197, 198, 203, 204. 
national sin of, 188. 
Gladden, 187. 

God, moral government of, 2, 
63, 69. 
Kingdom of, 10, 19, 45, 57. 
mystic view of, 28. 
fatherhood of, 30, 46, 59. 
Lord of all, 57. 
control of history, 58. 
purpose in history, 61 sq. 

69, 81. 
solidarity with man, 81. 
immanent, 82. 



[241 ] 



INDEX 



transcendent, 82. 

faith in, revived in time of 

trouble, 88, 231. 
faith in, based upon experi- 
ence rather than logic, 
89, 90. 
differences in conception of, 

216. 
the ultimate source of 
power, 230. 
God consciousness, 235. 
Good government clubs, 157. 
Good-will, 203. 
Greek, 19. 
Grey, Lord, 52. 
Guilt, 173. 

Hague Court, 195. 
Hangchow, 151. 
Hebrews, religion of, 55. 
History, God's training- 
school, 45. 
Christian interpretation of, 
48-96. 
Human brotherhood, 221, 
233. 

Ideal, power of, 137. 

lack of an adequate, 184. 
Idealism, 136. 
Ideals of peace, 11. 
Ignatius Loyola, 143. 
Immigration acts, 164, 166. 
Immortality, 56, 92. 

experimental basis for our 
faith in, 93. 

reinforced by the war, 93. 
Imperialism, 218, 219. 

English, 189. 



India, 224. 

Individual, significance of, 
142. 

Individualism, 148. 
inadequacy of, 149. 

Individualistic agencies, 6. 

Individualistic religion, argu- 
ments against, 31. 

Inland Sea, 150. 

Inquisition, 218. 

International brotherhood, 
136. 

Internationalism, 181. 
bankruptcy of, 7. 

Isaiah, 58, 102. 

Israel, 55 t 63, 66, 80, 82, 102, 
103. 

Issue raised by the war, 11. 

Italy, 143, 177. 



James, Professor, 184. 

Jane, Mr., 116. 

Japan, 116, 128, 150, 166, 

168, 207, 224, 229. 
Japanese church, function of, 

228. 
Japanese people, alternative 

before, 189, 190. 
Jehovah, 55, 63, 217. 
Jeremiah, 58, 70. 
Jerusalem, the new, 62. 
Jesus, 30, 46, 100, 143. 
Jesus' method, 91. 
Jesus Christ, 56, 62, 95. 

Kingdom of, 62. 
Job, 70. 
Joshua, 218. 
Julius Csesar, 121. 
Justice, 163, 165. 



( 242 ] 



INDEX 



Kaiser, 213. 
Kim, 32. 

Kingdom of God, 69, 100, 
134, 159, 179, 180, 184, 
213, 214, 225. 
extent of, 101. 
nature of, 105. 
means of its realization, 
107. 
Kipling, 32. 
Krupp, 182. 

Labour Leader, 133. 

Lahusen, Dr., 198. 

Lane, Mr., 221. 

Latimer, 77. 

League of International 

Friendship, 203. 
League of Nations, 192. 
Letter of German Christians, 

199. 
Life after death, 26. 
Lincoln, 177. 
Lissauer, 198. 
Luther, 37, 143. 

Martin, 224. 
Martyrs, 79. 
Mary, 210. 
Materialism, 109. 

as a philosophic theory, 110. 

as a mode of life, 110. 
Mazzini, 143, 177. 
Messiah, 63. 
Method of God, redemptive 

love, 71. 
Mexico, 172. 

duty of United States to, 
172, 173. 
Militarism, 114, 117, 181. 



Military service, universal, 

127. 
Missions, Christian, 215; ef- 
fect of war upon, 207. 
unity of, 227. 
Mohammedan slave-traders, 

177. 
Monasticism, 143. 
Moral government of God, 2. 

challenge of God's, 70. 
Moral reserves of humanity, 

137. 
Mott, Dr., 203. 
Munich, 132. 
Mysticism, 9. 

anti-social character of, 28. 
meaning of, 28. 
relation of to Christianity, 
30. 

Napoleon, 121. 
Nation, Christian view of its 
claim upon the citizen's 
allegiance, 159. 
National selfishness a cause of 

war, 51. 
Nationalism, 109, 113. 

its rejection of Christian 

end, 113. 
anti-Christian character of, 
114, 115. 
Neutral nations, 44. 
New Testament, 36. 
New York City, 156. 
New Zealand, 165. 
Nietzsche, 72,95, 185, 186, 188. 

Odin, 217. 
Official papers, 65. 
Old Testament, 58, 218. 



[ 243 ] 



INDEX 



Optimism, 11, 57. 
Organization, need of an in- 
ternational, 191. 
Osaka, 150. 

Pacifism, 175. 

contemporary, 54. 

arguments for, 175. 

difficulties in, 176. 

limitations of, 180. 
Pacifists, courage of, 179. 
Palace of The Hague, 6. 
Palestine, 60. 
Panama, 236. 

" Papers for War Time," 198. 
Patriotism, 160. 

distinguished from nation- 
alism, 113, 114. 
Paul, 77. 

Paul's method, 91. 
Peace, permanent, its nature, 
98. 

evidences of love of, 118. 
Peace movement, 202. 
Persia, 55. 

Philosophy of history, 69. 
Philistia, 56. 
Pittsburgh, 150. 
Plan of God, social nature of, 

71. 
Poland, 58, 85. 
Popes, militant, 218. 
Practicability of Christianity, 
rejection of, by many 
thoughtful people, 16. 
Prayer, spirit of, in the 

trenches, 85. 
Premillenarianism, 9, 24. 

explanation of, 25, 26. 

reason for rejecting, 27. 



Preparedness, 181. 

need of a new concept of, 
182. 

need of Christian, 185. 
Programme, rivals of the 
Christian, 109 sq. 

the Christian, for human- 
ity, 97-140. 
Progress, 178. 
Prophet of the Exile, 72. 
Prophets of Israel, 54, 63. 
Protestantism, 143. 
Providence, 56, 61. 
Public opinion, 142. 
Puritanism, 218. 
Purpose, the divine, 84. 

Race, 20. 

Reason, function of, in pro- 
ducing faith, 89. 

Reconstruction, 8. 

Redemption through Christ, 
21. 

Reichstag, 119. 

Religion, inexhaustible vital- 
ity of, 46. 

Repentance, 173. 

Resources available for the 
Christian cause, 131. 

Responsibility, question of 
ultimate, 67. 

Ridley, 77. 

Roberts, Lord, 127. 

Rome, 60. 

Russia, 6, 52, 165, 203. 

Russians, 85. 

Salvation, 56, 219. 
Samaritan, 171. 
Saul, 218. 



[ 244 ] 



INDEX 



Savage races, 167. 
Science, 147. 
failure to remain objective, 

7. 
Christian attitude toward, 

107. 
limitations of, 111. 
Self-development, 159. 
Self-interest the governing 
principle of diplomacy, 
50. 
Self-sacrifice, 135. 
Sin, 211. 

Christian attitude to, 212. 
forgiveness of, 212. 
revival of consciousness of, 

65. 
nature of, in unbrotherli- 

ness, 66. 
national, 66. 
Social gospel, 47. 
Social ideal, 26, 56. 
Social message of Christian- 
ity, 32. 
Social question, Christian in- 
terest in, 147. 
Social service, 160. 
Social system, unchristian 
character of the present, 
153. 
Social validity of Christian- 
ity, importance of ques- 
tion, 8. 
Socialism, 194. 
failure of, 6. 
Socialists, 232. 
German, 132. 
English, 133. 
Society, modern conception 
of, 146. 



Solidarity, human, 75. 

in sin, 76. 

in salvation, 76, 78. 
Spirit of God, 92, 96. 
State, non-Christian charac- 
ter of, 20. 

ultimate unity of, 20. 

Christian view of duty to, 
33. 
Student movement, 202, 203. 
Suffering, Christian attitude 
toward, 63. 

not inconsistent with love, 
64. 

meaning of, 71. 

not all due to sin, 64. 

of the innocent, 70, 71, 73. 

mystery of, 70. 
Sumter, 177. 
Superman, 95. 
Survey, The, 221, 233, 
Syria, 56. 

Tammany Hall, 156, 157. 
Tariffs, 164, 166. 
Temple, Dr., 198. 
Theodicy, 73. 

the complete Christian, 84. 
Theology, 17. 
Thor, 217. 
Times, London, 120. 
Tokyo, 229. 
Treitschke, 127, 185. 
Turkey, 176. 
Tyrol, 184. 

Unbrotherliness, 66. 

United States, 98, 116, 128, 189. 

naval policy of, 116. 
Unity, 3. 



[ 245 ] 



INDEX 



Value of human life, 94. 
Vicarious suffering, 71. 
Vorwarts, 232. 

War, challenge of, to Chris- 
tian faith, 1-12, 33, 34. 

the denial of brotherhood, 
8. 

first effect of, 9. 

attitude of religious men 
toward, 10. 

effect of, on faith in God, 14. 

effect of, on belief in immor- 
tality, 14, 15. 

the affirmation of the su- 
premacy of self-inter- 
est, 15. 

the denial of Christianity, 
16. 

remoter causes of, 51. 

God's method of discipline, 
54. 



Christian interpretation of, 

54. 
underlying causes of, 53. 
brutalizing effect of, 87. 
a symptom, 99. 
true remedy for, 100. 
of peoples, 145. 
unable to settle anything 

finally, 178. 
appeal of, to the strong, 219. 
Washburn, 224. 
Washington, 177. 
Western civilization not 

Christian, 207. 
White Book, English, 52. 
Women's Peace Party, 132. 
World citizenship, absence of 
consciousness of, 23. 

Yellow Sea, 168. 

Zion, 59. 



[ 246 ] 



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